Jacksonville, FL - Media Review Quotes

By Jeff Vrabel

Though their 100-minute set Friday was missing actual pyromania (hey guys, where's the fire? No, I mean it, where's the fire?), it was appropriately thick with the suggestion of it. Songs like Armageddon It, Foolin' and Photograph remain insanely infectious, meticulously assembled rock-candy standards built by the band and producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, now known as Mr. Shania Twain (indeed, many of Def Leppard's songs are just one titular exclamation mark away from being Shania singles). These guys can even make an anti-violence screed called Gods of War seem like wrestling intro music. The thing is, it's effective wrestling intro music.

The 46-year-old singer Joe Elliott now sports a growlier voice instead of his old stadium-filling howl, but the man works hard. He bobbed and weaved through the monster ballads Love Bites and Bringin' On The Heartbreak and dug his heels into Badfinger's No Matter What and a nutty electro version of Rock On.

Older tracks like Action wear their glam influences on their sleeves, and even Rock of Ages bounds along on a pretty slithery beat. But Friday was evidence that as the 80s marched on, DL's glam ingredients began to dim, leaving first the juggernaut Hysteria stuff -- the frothy Animal, the quietly insistent title track and the kind of ridiculous Rocket. And then it left laughable schlock like Let's Get Rocked, one of the low points of the entire hair-ish genre, and American Idol-worthy ballads like Two Steps Behind before grunge showed up and slaughtered pop-metal.

By Jacksonville/The Florida Times-Union 2005.

Read the full review at - jacksonville.com

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