The crunching opening song, “Truth?,” and the incendiary “Gift Of Flesh” were both vintage rockers, while the tender’n’bruised “Breathe A Sigh” and yearning “Blood Runs Cold” proved Leppard were still master craftsmen when it came to the creation of heart-melting, radio-friendly ballads. Seemingly acknowledging this on the edgy “Work It Out,” Joe Elliott sings, “We show the world a brand new face/It’s taken us all this time,” while his troops fervently explored diverse new territory on songs ranging from “Turns To Dust”’s loops, beats, and pungent Eastern promise, to the title track’s skinny, sweaty Chili Peppers-esque funk.Įlsewhere, however, the band returned to more familiar ground. The band then duly rehearsed and recorded their new songs as a unit in the studio instead of piecing their parts together individually, as they had done when making Hysteria and Adrenalize.Įntitled Slang, the record Def Leppard emerged with arguably remains the most adventurous in their canon. “Grunge was very much happening and our stuff was anathema at the time… we thought, Let’s keep it raw… It gave us the chance to grow up a little.”Īccordingly, Leppard experimented with new sounds and textures, while Rick Allen swapped his electronic drums for an acoustic kit for the first time since his pre- Hysteria accident. “We knew we couldn’t make a typical Def Leppard album in the mid-90s,” guitarist Vivian Campbell later told Classic Rock. In the US, meanwhile, a new breed of alt.rock superstars were releasing landmark titles such as The Smashing Pumpkins’ ambitious Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, Rage Against The Machine’s politically-charged Evil Empire, and Marilyn Manson’s controversial Antichrist Superstar. When Slang was first issued by Mercury, on May 14, 1996, Oasis’ triumphant two-night stand at Knebworth was only months away in the UK, and Britpop was at its height. In fairness, Joe Elliott and co would be the first to acknowledge that things had changed since they unleashed their anthemic signature sound in the 80s. Though pieced together while they mourned their fallen comrade, Steve Clarke, 1992’s Adrenalize rewarded them with a third consecutive multi-platinum album, and its 1996 follow-up, Slang, again showed Def Leppard had the belief and courage required to move with the times. Unlike most of the arena-sized metal acts obliterated by grunge, Def Leppard retained their relevance throughout the 90s.
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