DEF LEPPARD's New Album Pushed Back To Later In The Year

DEF LEPPARD singer Joe Elliott has revealed to Billboard.com that the band's new album, which was originally scheduled to be released this spring, will likely see the light of day later in 2015 because of what he called "an unprecedented amount of offers from various different people to release this record, which we weren't expecting and has changed the whole dynamic of how we want to put this record out." Elliott added that DEF LEPPARD's management was still "weeding through" the offers but expected the disc — the group's first since 2008's "Songs From The Sparkle Lounge" — to be made available "absolutely this year."

"The important thing is we make a good record," Elliott said. "I don't think people are queuing around the block to buy a DEF LEPPARD release right now; if they're doing it for anybody at all it'd be Taylor Swift and Katy Perry. But for us it's really important that we keep the high quality we've always tried to deliver and we don't let ourselves down. We're never gonna be the kind of band that goes, 'Well, it doesn't matter, nobody buys records anymore so let's just piss one out in a month.' That's not our style. It never will be."

Elliott previously told Shredload.com about the direction of DEF LEPPARD's new material: "Varied. Yeah, real good. Some of the stuff sounds absolutely like us. Some of the stuff sounds like things that people our age should be writing these days. So it's a bit of everything, really. Stuff that reminds us of stuff that we grew up listening to. So it's very much in the classic-rock mold, but it's also not stale and sterile."

He continued: "For us, it's kind of exciting, because we're doing a lot of stuff that we've never really done before. It's the odd, kind of Merry Clayton kind of… like THE [ROLLING] STONES would use horns on certain songs… Just varying things up a little bit, but it's still essentially got the sound. Because with our guitar sound and my voice, it's a distinctive sound. And Rick's [Allen] drum sound is a distinctive sound. It's the songwriting that is variable, because of everybody's input. It's different. Sav [bassist Rick Savage] writes a certain way, I write a certain way, Phil [Collen, guitar] and Vivian [Campbell, guitar] write a certain way. Even Rick Allen's written stuff on this record, which is really good. So there's a lot of variety there. I'm quite excited at the moment."

Elliott added: "Until we kind of get the other six [songs] that are bubbling away that need a little bit more work done, I don't really know what direction it's going in fully, but it's varied. And that's what I've always liked about our records. When you hear an AC/DC record, you know what you're gonna get and it doesn't really veer off that track much. But, say, like a QUEEN record, you can have 'Tie Your Mother Down' and 'You Take My Breath Away' on the same album, and it's almost two different bands. And that's what we like being — more in that direction — [where] we can dip our toe into different sounds."