10 Greatest Hair Metal Albums Of All Time
1. Hysteria - Def Leppard
Def Leppard weren't actually in the best spot after their blockbuster release Pyromania. While that nice slice of hard rock put these lads from Sheffield into the mainstream, they also had to worry about breaking even on their tour, escape debt, and write an album that was good enough to top their predecessor. Even though the odds were stacked against it, Hysteria proved to be one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of rock.
As these guys went into the studio, they had to weather through shifting producers, lack of ideas, and their drummer Rick Allen losing one of his arms in an accident during recording. You can hear that fine attention to detail on this record, and yet the album still feels like it could have been done yesterday. With nearly half of the tracklist getting played on the radio, the band managed to fulfil producer Mutt Lange's prophecy of having a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's Thriller.
It's about midway through listening that you realize you're not listening to a band at their wit's end (which they were). This was the sound of 5 individuals coming together and growing into the rock gods that they had idolized as kids. Every hard rock act tends to have a few rough edges in their sound, but when broken down to its foundation, this is the closest to perfection that hair metal ever got.