Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits

While far from a perfect collection of the seminal British hard rock band's best material, this compilation accomplishes something any one of the band's prime '80s albums cannot. It assembles a high-quality, fairly balanced blend of Def Leppard's finest power ballads and rockers on one CD, give or take a few. In this sense, it is the best choice for the many listeners who probably only want to own one disc from this important but far from album-consistent pop metal band.

The task of compiling best-of collections for music superstars certainly is not the most enviable enterprise one could take on. After all, fans will never all agree on the final tally. Still, this particular collection commits a cardinal but common mistake in overvaluing the artist's most recent material and thereby squeezing out essential tunes. I mean, who could possibly argue that a song like "Have You Ever Needed Someone So Bad?" trumps "Too Late for Love."

Still, despite that particular flaw this collection dips into Def Leppard's vault and generally pulls out keepers. "Photograph" and "Foolin'," two of the standout tracks from the band's breakthrough album, Pyromania, are thankfully and appropriately here. The near-perfect ballad "Love Bites" and the title track are the two best songs from Def Leppard's masterpiece, Hysteria, and they're here as well.

Beyond that, this disc remains a solid if not exceptional listen, cranking out the band's essential rockers like "Animal" and "Rock of Ages" and not scrimping on offerings from the huge-selling Hysteria album. The key problem with Vault is that it probably contains too many songs given the selection scheme. After all, while Def Leppard certainly qualifies as one of the best hard rock, arena rock and pop metal bands in rock music history, the band doesn't hold up in quite the same way in a broader, less genre-specific examination. Still, despite its flaws, this CD delivers for its target audience of casual fans of the group.