1. Rock! Rock! Till You Drop

2. Photograph

3. Stagefright

4. Too Late

5. Die Hard The Hunter

6. Foolin'

7. Rock Of Ages

8. Comin' Under Fire

9. Action! Not Words

10. Billy's Got A Gun

Rolling Stone

Just when it seemed like synthesizers had taken over the airwaves, along comes Def Leppard with Pyromania, a heavy-metal album full of brawling guitars and boasting state-of-the-radio production. Steve Clark and new member Phil Collen's fat fuzz riffs and power chords are more emotionally charged than most of the synthesized disco that passes for "modern music," and Robert John "Mutt" Lange's work behind the board brings singer Joe Elliott's screaming vocals into focus.

"Action! Not words," crows Elliott in the track of the same name, and that modus operandi holds true for most of the album. Rick Allen's crack-shot drumming, the thick layers of guitars and the enveloping echo of Lange's artfully busy mix more than cover up the street-corner rhyming of these tales of Tarzan sexuality and macho party exploits. But this young band (the average age is twenty-one) demonstrates surprising sophistication as it manipulates old heavy-metal tricks into tight, invigorating songs while holding epic pretensions in check. Both "Comin' under Fire" and "Photograph" combine the kaboom of AC/DC with slick choruses and brassy vocal harmonies that sound like a gassed-up Boston . Def Leppard may not be highly original, but they mean what they play, and Pyromania puts some much-needed fire back on the radio.

All Music

While Def Leppard had obviously wanted to write big-sounding anthems on their previous records, Pyromania was where the band's vision coalesced and gelled into something more. More than ever before, the band's songs on Pyromania are driven by catchy, shiny melodic hooks instead of heavy guitar riffs, although the latter do pop up once in a while. But it wasn't just this newly intensified focus on melody and consistent songwriting (and heavy MTV exposure) that made Pyromania a massive success — and the catalyst for the '80s pop-metal movement. Robert John "Mutt" Lange's buffed-to-a-sheen production — polished drum and guitar sounds, multi-tracked layers of vocal harmonies, a general sanding of any and all musical rough edges, and a perfectionistic attention to detail — set the style for much of the melodic hard rock that followed. It wasn't a raw or spontaneous sound, but the performances were still energetic and committed. Leppard's quest for huge, transcendent hard rock perfection on Pyromania was surprisingly successful; their reach never exceeded their grasp, which makes the album an enduring (and massively influential) classic.