Drastic Symphonies
by Def Leppard With The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

It's not immediately obvious what this album is looking at the tracklist, and when I first saw this I assumed it would be a live concert with an orchestra. What is actually is, though, is essentially an album of remixes, where the original recorded tracks by Def Leppard have the orchestra added to them. There are some newly recorded instrumental and vocal parts by Def Leppard to fit the orchestral tracks better, but from what I could tell there's only one song recorded again from scratch.

For the album in general, I think they stuck too close to the original sound of the songs. A lot of songs still feature the Def Leppard rhythm section as well as the vocals and solos, which completely overpowers the orchestra, so songs like "Paper Sun", "Hysteria" and "Love Bites" keep the same vibe as the originals, but with a bit of orchestra shoehorned in. There's also songs like "Love", "Kings Of The World" and especially "When Love & Hate Collide", which already had a symphonic feel to them, and these sound far too close to the originals as well.

There are a couple of songs where the orchestra takes centre stage a bit more, "Bringin' On The Heartbreak/Switch 625" and "Gods Of War" both have more of a different texture to the originals. Then there are two songs which mostly remove the Def Leppard rhythm section and just use the orchestra and vocals, "Animal" and "Too Late For Love", and these are definitely the the best parts of the album. They have a very different feel to the originals, with the vocals being a lot more exposed.

Then there's "Pour Some Sugar On Me", which I think was recorded from scratch as a duet with Emm Gryner, which is a bizarre version of the song. It's recorded as a serious, sincere ballad, but the lyrics for "Pour Some Sugar On Me" are just nonsense and innuendo, so it's really weird to have them sung like this.

There's also just a few dud songs on the album, like "Turn To Dust" and "Angels (Can't Help You Now)", which in my opinion weren't great in the first place, and aren't improved by the orchestra.

Overall, there's so much of the original tracks included here that it's hard to call the album bad; it's not much different to listening to a greatest hits album. It does feel like a wasted opportunity though, and I'd only really recommend listening "Too Late For Love" and "Animal" on merit, and "Pour Some Sugar On Me" just for the weirdness. (Edited)