Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen has revealed the band’s 11th album will be launched in October.
And he says the follow-up to 2008’s Songs From The Sparkle Lounge is “probably the most diverse thing we’ve done.”
Collen tells WAAF: “I think it’s the best thing we’ve done since Hysteria – I really do. It’s the loudest rock guitars we’ve ever had.”
And he believes the project is all the stronger for having developed organically. “We thought we were going to do an EP or a single, and we came out with 12 songs, and now we’ve got 14,” he says.
“There wasn’t any industry – no record company executive or anyone saying, ‘You’ve got to do an album.’ It was purely because we wanted to write songs, and we felt the need to do that.
“In the old days the Stones, Zeppelin, James Brown, the Beatles, they’d go into the studio when they had an idea and they’d record it. We’ve done it like that, and it has a fresher kind of sound for it. The integrity is just amazing – you can hear that in the grooves.”
Fellow guitarist Viv Campbell continues to tour while being treated for his returned cancer. Collen reports: “I said to the guys, ‘If I ever get sick or anything, I trust you guys to have my back.’
“I would probably have done it a little differently – I would have taken more time off and corrected that. But Viv doesn’t want to sit around. He wants to be out there.
“He’d feel worse it he was at home. So it depends on who you are. I’d just be a different kind of person.”
Def Lep are currently touring North America and they return to the UK in December.
