Def Leppard - Def Leppard (Vinyl)

There are two ways to look at an eponymous album by a band well into its fourth decade of existence: it's either a rebirth or a summation. In the case of Def Leppard's 2015 album -- their eleventh studio set, arriving a full seven years after Songs from the Sparkle Lounge -- the record is most certainly the latter, a nifty encapsulation of the group's range, obsessions, and ambitions. At 55 minutes, Def Leppard feels nearly as sprawling as the hour-plus Hysteria -- one of the first albums to ever feel specifically designed to fill out the confines of a CD -- but where that 1987 classic pulsates with the arrogance of a band hungering to conquer the world, this 2015 set is distinguished by the casual authority of a band who remain a band solely for the love of it. Unlike many groups with decades of experience under their belts, Def Leppard aren't particularly concerned with maturity, at least not in the conventional sense where they turn in fuzz guitars and heavy-booted stomps for sepia-