Hysteria

I suppose I’m meant to become a heavy metal fan after all. That’s certainly not going to happen. But after listening, it turned out that what I was hearing was actually pop metal—incredibly melodic, with mainstream production. It sounds a bit like Bon Jovi. Some of the songs have hit potential. I wasn’t familiar with this kind of music before today; in fact, this style is completely foreign to me. It’s definitely not for me.

Music for montages, raw energy but kind of a one trick pony

Leppard have always been a fun rock n roll band. I don't own any of their albums but they made some great singles and there's a host of those on this album.

Even the unfamiliar songs sound like hits. 4.

In your face, cheesy, brash hair metal

An enjoyable classic metal album, I enjoyed the title track and Rating: 4/5 GEMV (14.10.2026)

This is Def Leppard, no doubt. Scream the singing until my hair falls out, I guess?

This Glam Metal album feels like watching an excessively elaborate 1980s stadium show on a giant screen. Everything is polished, oversized and designed to impress: huge guitar riffs, booming drums, layered vocals and choruses built for thousands of people to shout along to. The production is impressively precise, and the melodies are catchy, but the constant stream of glossy hooks, high-pitched vocals and similar mid-tempo rock anthems starts to feel a little artificial. Every song seems determined to be the next big moment, yet the sheer abundance of them makes the album feel longer than it needs to be. I can appreciate the craftsmanship and enjoy some of the catchy parts, but I never get fully swept up in the spectacle. It's an entertaining enough show, just not one I need to see again anytime soon.

Shania Twain's metal album.

A good album from DL. They found a way to be even more creative despite all things.

It’s probably good but I’m not much into house

Fuck yeah!

POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME! Both completely ridiculous and awesome at the same time - I had a great time listening to this today.

This is a load bearing wall in the 80's metal house. Fantastic stuff!

Over-produced and annoying

How can you not love this? Hysteria is such a time and place, so crisp and clear production-wise, so fun, and just so, well, Def. Granted, this came out a few months after I was born, and baby me probably listened to this a million times. Hysteria is in my bones, my blood, my mind. I mean- pour Some Sugar on Me- what else could you ask for?

It's a fine album if you like Def Leppard, but I just can't stand them. They're not for me, and that's all I've got to say about that.

AWESOME!! How many hits can one album have?! This is 80s hair metal at its one of the best. You could probably turn on any song from this album at a party and suddenly everyone knows the words.

My brother was once playing Animal in his car and I said “according to Spotify, this was one of my most played songs last year”. He said anyone who didn’t have it in their most played songs needed a slap. This album is a lot of dumb fun but it’s also a shade too long.

Favourites were Hysteria and Pour some Sugar on me

3.5

I don't geberally like hard rock, but I enjoy this album..4 stars

I'm possibly on my own island here, but I think Hysteria is a great album. I think it stands with Appetite for Destruction as one of the best 80s hair rock albums. As much as I've complained about his production on the Cars' Heartbeat City, I think Mutt Lange's production is an asset here -- the shimmery guitars and programmed drums give it a unique feel for this genre. It really leans into a pop sound in the best way possible, and despite it's very 80s sound, it holds up really well. I think the first half is all highlights, but "Rocket", "Animal", and "Love Bites" are all pretty great. I've probably heard "Pour Some Sugar on Me" too many times, but it's pretty fun. Outside of that, I've always loved the title track. Some filler on the second side brings it down a bit, but I'm still going 4.5 stars on this.

I like animals (especially badgers and otters). I like sugar (especially on my cereal. Even if it’s a cereal with sugar already on it like Sugar Puffs. The sound of sugar being poured from a bag is also quite soothing and relaxing. I don’t tend to have sugar with my coffee although that is changing because more and more recently I’ve been having one teaspoon with my filter coffee and if it’s instant coffee I might tend to have a one or two teaspoons more). I like Armageddon (or at least the movie). I also like women (especially if they give lots of love and affection and love bites). All in all this is a very good album for me. Banger anthems. Rocks hard yet very poppy. This is a Hysteri-YEAH! from me. 4 stars.

3.2/5

There's a reason they're in the rock and roll hall of fame.

The sound/production of this album is obvious extremely dated, but these hooks are eternal. Holy smokes.

“Pour some sugar on me” is a great song and this is a great Hair Metal record, but there’s just not enough variety here to keep me coming back and wanting to listen to it again and again.

It's okay for what it is, but as a 90s kid 80s music sounds pretty dated.

Sugar-coated pop-metal slop. The songs are waaaaay overproduced and have not aged well.

A favorite to listen to while playing cards or cooking a meal.

Met vlagen vermakelijk, instrumenten zijn goed

I thought I'd hate this much more, it's solid hair metal

69

First, I just want to say, Def Leppard is probably the dumbest band name ever. I was 11 when the singles from this came out and I loved them. Got the cd and probably only listened to those singles over and over because I don’t recall ever hearing a lot of these songs. The production is what you’d expect from late 80’s radio friendly “metal”. Not sure I’ll revisit this again but the nostalgia hit me hard when Animal started so four stars it gets.

База в своем жанре, которая всегда проходила мимо меня. Хитов на альбоме прям много, и они реально классно звучат, но я их начал слушать не так давно, то есть какой-то эмоциональной связи с группой у меня нет. Просто добротный софт-рок. Отдельный респект за то, что не бросили своего барабанщика в беде, но минус вайб за кринжовую обложку, которая вообще не подходит такому звучанию. Остальные песни прошли как-то незаметно, но хиты прям мощные.

Боже, нормисная безвкусная скукота. Анна Асти звучит интереснее.

Ммм глем

вообще никогда не понимал весь этот волосатый рок 80х, до сих пор не понимаю - 3, чисто ибо тут я хотя бы 3-4 песни знаю

Hysteria by Def Leppard was okay, but I didn't really connect with it

Tan ruidoso y monotono que no me transmitió absolutamente nada 3/10

Somehow lacking in hits, but it gets extra points for being an irreverent, unironic celebration of maximalist, overproduced rock ... with the most wall-of-sound angelic background choir vocals you can imagine.

bad and wrong

Don't get hysterical.

This album sounds like it’s the musical version of stadium hard rock for dummies. The catchy ”yea yea yeah” and ”whoo whoo whoa” hooks are so obvious that no-one can miss those. Never really liked this stuff when it couldn’t be avoided because it played everywhere, but i do understand it’s place on this list.

Hysterical 80s sounds the I have heard quite a bit thanks to my bigger bro. Not really a fan.

At first this was a solid 2, but then Love Bites got my karaoke heart beating, and I noticed I was singing along loudly here in my home office (luckily). So, it's a 3.

#487 / 1089 Heard before? ✅ Revisit? ❌ I don't care what happened to who, I'm here reviewing music and this one is one of those shits they did after totally abandoning NWOBHM, went full on pop and really started optimizing for radio play, MTV and money. This is also the year of thrash metal, beginning of death metal and black metal proper, when all metal was still going up the heavy and fast scale. Essential releases from Celtic Frost, Napalm Death, Voivod, Sodom, Suicidal Tendencies, Candlemass, Death, Bathory, Anthrax, Exodus, King Diamond, Kreator and fucking Mayhem came out this year. If one album should be rated with the past in mind, this diarrhea of an piece of shit would be it. When ALL metal went harder, faster and aggro-er, these cunts went towards yesterdays news to glam and pop. Talk about selling out! It's the ultraprocessed and overproduced cousin of the empty calorie junkfood. Almost gave it 2/5 but recounting it's sins reminded me that it does not need nor deserve forgiveness. 1/5 just by listening to bits of few tracks.

Not my kind of music, but some undeniably great music.

these are Spinal Tap songs but Spinal Tap sounds better

This has all the trappings of something that rocks, and it kind of rocks.

This is an acceptable hair metal album. It's got quite a few hits but nothing that really resonates with me personally. If nothing else, I've always enjoyed Def Leppard's dope album covers. They really encapsulate the spirit of rock & roll/metal at the time and this one is no exception. Pure badass-ery. Favorite track: Love Bites

Prefer earlier Def Leppard but you can’t deny the hit power of this record, 7 singles! It’s a little long at over an hour in run time. Hate “Armageddon It” but love the title track

4 - BAD

Ik weet niet of ik dit beter vind dan het ouevre van Frank Gallan.

had some songs already pretty peak

Business as usual babes

not for me

No está mal, el rock/heavy de los 80 y el doble bombo tan característico de este grupo. Me he guardado "Pour some sugar on me".

Can I rate it zero.

Didn't realize Pour Some Sugar on Me was by Def Leppard! Also thought it was more metal than it is; actually much more rock.

A good example of mid-eighties, mid-atlantic, ‘poodle rock’. I despise it to it’s core

Terrible album by one of the most over rated bands ever!

I listened to 3 tracks. It sucked when it came out and it has not gotten better with time.

4,5

I couldn't finish this album, it's pretty cheesy.

This is a better album than my 3 stars suggests. I love some of the songs, but an entire album is a lot. In the pantheon of hair metal albums this is a gem.

Felt like I could hear the hair in the metal. Started off fun and loud, got bored in the middle

Rocky and raucous and totally adolescent.

Probably the best blockbuster commercial rock of the ‘80s. This is Michael Bay if he was a rock band - bombastic, glossy, high-tech and dumb as rocks! Such a blast if you’re able to meet it on its level.

You could not avoid this album in the 80s, so many hits from this record it could be a greatest hits album. While they are catchy, they definitely got overplayed for me and I find them plodding. But hard to argue their popularity and presence.

Better musicians than I remembered, but I never could settle into the music.

Solid 80’s hair band and knew a few mor songs than I thought.

Didn't finish listening Only recognized one song Never was a hair-band fan One star for the one-armed drummer

Meh. This album has a lot of hits, but the hair metal genre doesn't do much for me.

Ok, vähä filleriä omaan makuun

Never got much into Def Leppard. Too mainstream rock for me. 3/10.

More of what you’d expect from Def Leppard Not bad but doesn’t do anything different 3.5/5 Favorites: first half of the album, hysteria

Glossy, polished, over produced, still has some all timers on it. An album I fully understand the detractors and the rabid fans. To me it’s fine.

This was too cheesy for me really, and you get the point before too long. Many of the songs revolve around similar subjects, structures and sounds, and over an hour of that is a bit overkill. There are some decent riffs and sing-along choruses here to be found here and there, but there's precious little which blew me away. The big singles are good for drunken karaoke nights but that's the extent of it for me.

I have never felt so guilty for an actual guilty pleasure.

I really don't get on with this kind of hair metal, does nothing for me at all

Just awful...

Plus one for nostalgia

Wow, I didn't like this

Prime glam metal, full stop. 4.5 bumped up to 5.

I’m at a 4.5 that I’ll (surprisingly enough) bump down to a 4. My biggest knock on “Pyromania” was the following: “This is not quite as good as its contemporaries in terms of a full album experience, but it still stands up decently well, with my only real complaint being ‘it just kind of sounds the same after too long’. We’ve had other albums in this space that kept the energy all up the way through, at a blazing breakneck pace, and this one just didn’t keep it there for as long as it could have.” The reason I’ve copied that verbatim is because the exact same issue applies verbatim. This time around, with an extra 17 minutes on the docket & a far less compelling closer in “Love and Affection” (the 6th sex track on the album, by my count), there’s just not enough of a saving grace to bump this up to a 5. Don’t get me wrong, the highest highs here are remarkably high, including the dopamine hit that is “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, & there are no truly low lows, but in exchange for some potent instrumental energy, they’ve traded in their ability to write full songs. Almost every track here is one or two short verses & then a barrage of choruses. There’s not a lot of bite to them, and while I’m fine with ‘thoughtless’ music when it sounds as good as it does here, there’s only so much guitar-driven metal you can take as a flowing album experience. Realistically, this complaint is exaggerated by the fact that this album didn’t just stop at “Hysteria”. If it had, I would’ve been fine to bump this up to a 5, flaws and all, solely on account of just having a lot of fucking fun listening to this. Seriously, everything here is “Pyromania” turned up to an even higher degree, and when it’s rolling, it’s fucking awesome. It just rolls on a bit too long, with “Excitable” being anything but excitable after 53 minutes of similar sounding songs (& the entirety of “Hysteria” before it roughly being the same exact topic), and with “Love and Affection” being just as predictable as the title would suggest. They’re not bad tracks at all, and I do like them. They’re just the musical equivalent of needless exposition dumps after the ending. It does feel like a glam metal classic despite my complaints. It’s just not the best album experience at the end of the day, and if you have far less tolerance for the repetition in the music here, I can understand knocking it as far down as a 3. I won’t go that low, but I am stuck going from a 4.5 to a 4. Honestly, it’s probably closer to a flat 4, but I digress. If it were just a little bit tighter for everything surrounding the actual instrumentals & vocals (namely lyrics, length & track order), it’d probably be an easy 5. As it stands, it just gets a bit high on its own horny supply without reinventing the wheel enough to warrant its shortcomings. Hence, a 4.5 bumped down to a 4. It’s still probably an essential listen for ‘80s glam rock, and it should be on the list.

For a band originally from the UK they were really not that big over here - well, at least, in the circles I moved in, and my time overlaps massively with their peak in the late 70's to late 80's. I've always considered them more of a US phenomenon (this seemed to be a 'thing' around that time e.g. Whitesnake). Anyway, I was familiar with a few of the more famous tracks and they are very catchy. I enjoyed it but wouldn't rush out to hear it again. I'm going with 3 stars, seems about right.

Good album, I hadn't heard it before, and I was shocked to find that it was good. I'm not a fan of theirs, but it may have opened a door with a few of these songs.

Just what I needed yesterday

Felt like the same song over and over again

Solid album, classic rock.

Usually not huge on 80s hair metal but this album is super solid. Multiple big hits and even the filler songs still rock.

Pretty cool. Standout tracks: Animal, Pour Some Sugar On Me, Excitable

Vier Jahre nach dem Durchbruch mit "Pyromania" erschien im August 1987 "Hysteria", das vierte Album des englischen Rockquintetts aus Sheffield. Aufgenommen wurde es an drei Orten: in den Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum, den Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin und im Studio Des Dames in Paris. Den letzten Schliff gab Produzent Robert John "Mutt" Lange in seinem privaten Studio in Hindhead. Erschienen ist das Album bei Mercury, in Europa über Bludgeon Riffola – musikalisch liegt es zwischen Hard Rock und Glam Metal, glattgeschliffen bis zur Radiotauglichkeit. Drei Jahre steckten in der Produktion, und das merkt man. Im Dezember 1984 verlor Schlagzeuger Rick Allen bei einem Autounfall seinen linken Arm; monatelang stand infrage, ob die Band überhaupt weitermacht. Allen kam zurück, mit einem eigens für ihn gebauten elektronischen Schlagzeug. Lange schichtete Gitarren und Gesang Spur für Spur übereinander, bis Songs wie "Animal", "Pour Some Sugar on Me" oder "Love Bites" klangen, als könnten sie gar nicht anders klingen. 25 Millionen verkaufte Exemplare, sieben Hit-Singles – das sind die Zahlen. Was mich mehr beeindruckt: Trotz der chaotischen, jahrelangen Entstehung wirkt kein Song wie ein Lückenfüller. Man hört die Arbeit, aber man hört sie nicht als Anstrengung. Zwölf Songs, drei Jahre, ein Arm weniger – und trotzdem klingt jede Sekunde wie aus einem Guss.

I rinsed this as a kid. Couldn’t get enough of Def Leppard. Look, it’s a ridiculous album. The production is preposterous and the lyrics are all about basically NOTHING… but it’s quite fun.

Pretty awesome straight 80s rock!

2.75

Is it bad I feel like so much rock of a similar era sounds the same? I enjoy it though.

Good God if I hear it "Pour Some Sugar On Me" one more time I'm going to punch somebody in the head god-awful album.