by Michael McCarthy
Def Leppard has just released a new live album, Diamond Star Heroes Live From Sheffield (Live). Not that the world really needed another live album by Def Leppard, but this might actually be their best one so far. Joe’s voice just sounds really, really good on this one, whereas I thought his voice sounded really strained on their previous live album. In any case, this new one is great, but it starts off really odd. For one thing, it opens with “This Guitar” from Diamond Star Halos but that song is essentially a slow ballad, so it’s a very unusual choice for opening a live album. Also, Joe talks at the beginning of the song and introduces the band and it’s obvious that the song was not the opening song from the show. It’s clear that it was later on in the concert but they just chose to open the album with it anyway for some strange reason. But it’s kind of distracting when you realize the song wasn’t actually the first song from the set. And the really weird thing is that the second song is another ballad, “Whe Love & Hate Collide” and the infuriating thing about that is that they don’t play the whole song. They cut it down to under three minutes. They do the first verse, the middle eight and reprise of the chorus and that’s it. No second verse. Now, during the concert, it might’ve been done as part of a medley or something, which would explain why they’d shorten it, but for the second song on the live album to be a second ballad AND not even be the full song, that’s really bizarre.
All in all, it’s a solid live album with a nice song selection. “Take What You Want” and “Bringin’ On the Heartbreak” especially shine. But they shouldn’t have opened the album with a song that clearly wasn’t the show’s opener and they shouldn’t have included an abridged version of “When Love & Hate Collide” unless they were including the whole medley but none of the other songs are abridged so if it was part of a medley they opted not to release the other parts of it. Kind of weird.
Tracklist:
1. This Guitar (Live) (5:57)
2. When Love And Hate Collide (Live) (3:01)
3. Take What You Want (Live) (4:42)
4. Lets Get Rocked (Live) (4:47)
5. Animal (Live) (4:06)
6. Foolin’ (Live) (5:30)
7. Armageddon It (Live) (5:25)
8. Kick (Live) (4:15)
9. Love Bites (Live) (6:00)
10. Promises (Live) (4:26)
11. Rocket (Live) (5:11)
12. Bringin’ On The Heartbreak (Live) (4:42)
13. Switch 625 (Live) (5:27)
14. Hysteria (Live) (6:56)
15. Pour Some Sugar On Me (Live) (5:03)
16. Rock Of Ages (Live) (4:30)
17. Photograph (Live) (6:12)
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