Def Leppard singer Joe Eliott says the band’s upcoming album features some classic sounds from their history while proudly displaying their influences on their sleeves.
The UK rockers have been in the studio working on the follow-up to 2008’s “Songs From The Sparkle Lounge” after completing some marathon songwriting sessions last year.
"It's all over the place,” Elliott tells VH!’s That Metal Show (video below). “Stylistically wise… I can't really pinpoint, because every song is different from every other song. We've always aimed at that.
“We hit it for the first time on 'Hysteria', where we'd done an album that allowed us to go in any direction we wanted to; it wasn't just purely hard rock or metal. There was pop, there was ballady stuff. There was… everything other than acoustic; we didn't have that covered at the time, but we did a few years later with 'Two Steps Behind'."
"There's some real classic Leppard-sounding stuff on the new album,” continues the singer, “but there's also some stuff that a band that's of our standing — basically, in our 50s — should be doing, which is a little bit more… I don't wanna say grownup, 'cause that makes it sound boring, but a little bit more… organic, I think is probably the best way to put it.
“We've allowed our roots, or the music that we were steeped in of other people, to soak into our music a little bit more. So whereas you can listen to a Zeppelin album and go, 'I can hear a little bit of Muddy Waters in there,' or a little bit of this, that and the other. You'll be able to say, 'That sounds a little bit like…' because we've been honest enough to just say, 'Well, if it sounds a bit like… This song sounds like Led Zeppelin,' or, 'This song sounds like Queen,' then that's us, that's 'cause we always did.
“But we weren't trying to disguise everything too much; we just let it breathe and just be natural. So it's a very mixed bag of songs. There's fifteen of them on the go. I don't know how many of them will make the album, but I'm hoping most of them will, because they're all very different from each other and very representative of who we are right now."
Def Leppard just wrapped up a spring tour of Canada; they’ll begin a series of European shows on May 15 and will return to North America for an extensive summer run with Styx and Tesla that starts June 23 in Tampa, FL.
See also:
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VIDEO: Def Leppard kick off Canadian tour
Foreigner joins Def Leppard fall US tour
VIDEO: Def Leppard perform on French-Canadian version of The Voice
Search Def Leppard at hennemusic
