Def Leppard is showing no signs of easing off the gas!
Bassist Rick Savage recently spoke to People and said band already has enough ideas to follow-up to 2022’s Diamond Star Halos, with even more material still taking shape.
“We’ve really got enough material, and we’ll have enough material to take us through to the end of the decade pretty much,” Savage told People. “We’re a few songs short of having two albums.”
You’ll be happy to know the band continues to write and record, with Def Leppard’s thirteenth studio album currently expected to arrive in late 2026 or early 2027!
“It’s an ongoing process,” Savage said. “If we needed to put the album out next week, we absolutely could, but we’re still writing, still recording, still finishing off. The last 20 percent takes 80 percent of the time, and that’s where we’re at.”
Last month, Def Leppard released their latest single, Rejoice, ahead of their return to Las Vegas for Def Leppard: Live at Caesars Palace, which kicked off February 3. The track is available now via UMe on all streaming platforms.
Singer Joe Elliott said Rejoice began as a lyrical idea centred on hitting rock bottom and pushing upward.
“I said to Phil one day, ‘I’ve got this idea for a lyric where the narrator is at absolute rock bottom and wants to rise up to a higher level,’” Elliott explained. “I asked if he had something musically that would fit, and he said, ‘As it happens, yes I do.’”
Guitarist Phil Collen said the song came together quickly once the pieces aligned.
“I had this riff kicking around for a while,” Collen said. “I built a tribal-style drum loop around it and sent it to Joe. He sang straight over it. Once Ronan McHugh added proper drums, it turned into this powerful chant. It’s hard rock for us, with a bit more oomph than some of what we’ve done lately. There’s something kind of magical about it.”
Last November, you heard drummer Rick Allen said there was “lots of new music” in progress, with most of the recording complete and only final details left to finish.
Def Leppard’s most recent studio album, Diamond Star Halos, arrived in 2022 and was followed by Drastic Symphonies, a reimagining of the band’s catalogue recorded with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The album spent 15 weeks at number one on the Billboard Current Classical chart.
More than five decades in, Def Leppard is still writing, still recording, and clearly not finished yet!
