It's a depressing sign of the times that what my young teenage self once sought and found in Def Leppard, today's kids are being told to seek in BreZe, four 11-year-old schoolgirls. You question the comparison? I think Def Leppard are positively nutritious for kids. Their simplistic, melodramatic heart beats to a teenage pulse; their music is of the fantastical, triumphal type that makes you feel like you're standing, legs dashingly akimbo, at the prow of a ship ploughing through the seas of insecurity. Love is nothing to panic about "Women! Women! Lots of pretty women!" and life is there to be conquered. You can even graffiti the band's name all over your jotter without being able to spell correctly.
Mercifully, they haven't changed much. The first band to sell 7m copies of successive albums, Pyromania and Hysteria, in the States, Def Leppard bestrode heavy metal just as that genre was entering ultimately terminal self-parody. In 20 years, they've tried once to shed their steely Sheffield power-rock sound in favour of musical eclecticism on the 1997 album Slang - and it duly flopped. At Wembley, following the release of return-to-form CD Euphoria, this Leppard has changed its spots back again.
The screaming unison of guitars, the euphoric choral yelling: there's nothing to show the last decade ever happened save for the lamentable absence of poodle-permed hairdos.
Testosterone metal looks more not less stupid with shorn locks: the mullets were integral to rock's flamboyant defiance of reality. But the leather'n'lace posturing is intact. Frontman Joe Elliott thinks his microphone stand is a guitar. Rick Savage and Vivian Campbell think their guitars impress the ladies. Weaselly Phil Collen strips his chest bare.
Elliott strikes a superhero pose atop the amps that jut into the crowd, the better to look indomitable. A Union Jack adorns the back wall, but Def Leppard are way too uncool for Cool Britannia. Even when metal is rehabilitated, as it surely will be in this laddish climate, Def Leppard may be passed over: they were always at the softer end of hardcore, where tunes were unfashionably tuneful, and chickens' heads were safe from singer's teeth.
But their distinctive brand of melodious bombast is as effective as ever in the live arena. Animal and Pour Some Sugar On Me remain beefy, infectiously catchy pop songs, and are foregrounded in a set designed to give the crowd precisely what they want. Elliott, notwithstanding his paunch, can leap as high as ever to emphasise a chord change. "Rock of ages, rock of ages", he sings, "still rollin', rock'n'rollin", and it's heartening to see that, impervious to the slings and arrows of fashion, 80s-era British metal endures, in all its ridiculous, infantile, epic wonder.
• Touring to Brighton, Bournemouth, Glasgow, Sheffield, Belfast and Dublin.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable
** Mediocre * Terrible
