DEF LEPPARD frontman Joe Elliott has issued the following update:

"Let's talk a little about the next album. We've been writing while on tour, really. At most shows, we did have this room set up backstage that we called the "Sparkle Lounge," where we were trying new ideas out, record little bits. Our initial plan was to get it finished in May, which would make a possible August release and then do some European shows, followed by other places, but I'm not sure anymore if we'll able to do that anymore!

As for the musical direction..... It will probably not be too far away from where we've always been, but looking at where everybody's head is right now, it's definitely gonna be an album like Yeah!. You know, up-tempo, three-minute songs. Not as experimental as, say, X was. Which was a bit of hip-hop here, a bit of straight up rock 'n roll there..... Sav's (Rick Savage) got a great song that sounds a lot like GARY GLITTER meets U2 meets Leppard, and I've got this song which sounds like AC/DC during their Let There Be Rock-period. You know, daaaaw-deh-deddle-deddle-dee-daaaaaw, that kind of thing, with the vocals like this [hums vocal line], almost like 'Rock And Roll' by LED ZEPPELIN.....meets AC/DC! Full-on rock.

And then Phil's got this song, and Vivian want to sit down with me to finish this other song..... You know, we've got a lot of ideas. Some of them are even 10 or 15 years old, but weren't used earlier because only now we feel we can use them.

To record an album in four or five months, which we are set to do, is not hard. AC/DC's Back In Black was done in five months. Led Zeppelin II took two days to record! See, nobody is ever gonna sell 15 million records again, so what's the point in trying to. All we want to do is to make sure there's at least three or four songs on the album that are absolutely top notch, and the other six have got to be really really good, but they don't have to be hit singles, the kind of classics that you hear on the radio. With any hit album, there's three songs that everybody knows - on Pyromania for example, we had Foolin', 'Photograph' and 'Rock Of Ages'. The pop-buying audience doesn't know any of the other songs on the album, because they're not played on the radio. Our fans know them, of course, but the average radio listener doesn't.

So, that's the plan, but as always.....things might, and most likely, WILL change! We're only at the beginning, so anything can happen.....!"