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Def Leppard is a band that's been greeted with total indifference by everyone except the four million and counting people who bought their third album.

Pyromania has been sitting near the top of the charts for almost a year now, making this noisy little English quintet the largest selling act in PolyGram's history. The company should give special thanks to Foreigner and AC/DC producer Mutt Lange, who is rapidly emerging as the Bob Ezrin of the '80s (next assignment: the Cars). High 'N' Dry (Lange's first Lep venture, their second album) has been selling steadily since late '81. On Pyromania Lange's contribution is so great that he receives--and deserves--songwriting credit on almost every cut. He may not do much for Def Leppard's rock--all-night-party-every-day content except encourage it, but then, content isn't the name of this game. Cram packed with discrete sound effects, drum as garbage cannonades, lean buzzy leads, and fat buzzy powerchords, Pyromania cross-in-dexes hard rock of ages from A(C/DC) to Z(eppelin).

Left to their own devices, as on their first album, the band's busy rifflets would probably run on forever. Lange's gotten rid of the goo (cf. the debut's "Sorrow Is A Woman") and incorporated their rhythmic ‘ideas' (most of which come off the same boat as ‘The Immigrant Song') into masterpieces of organization. Here's a man who, in this day of synthetic beat, knows the value of a good old-fashioned cowbell. Why d'ya think anybody ever thought they knew what "Mississippi Queen/You know what I mean" meant? Def Leppard's biggies, "Photograph" and "Rock Of Ages," clunk-clunk-click along just as merrily.

Maybe the real key to this production is the way it consolidates the lessons of Lange's recent commercial successes--he's managed to combine the great onslaught and heavy everyman choruses of AC/DC with the great arrangements and heavy melodies of Foreigner. Somehow, though, the result sounds far better slice-by-slice on AOR than by-the-pie on the turntable, where the limitations of both singer and band eventually become as wearying as the dense, sludgy mix that's supposed to bury them. Yet for all its shortcomings and conventional wisdom, Pyromania marks Def Leppard as the best and brightest of the "new wave" of heavy metal. They are certainly the best and the cutest. They're also among the youngest--the old man of the group (and the newest member), guitarist Phil Collen, is 25. The drummer is 19.

Def Leppard typify the "new" metal--or the "new" hard rock--because their product is not, like the "old" metal, based on an attempt to utilize modern technology to express, reinvent, or just psychedelicize the blues. In fact, the "new" heavy metal isn't based on much except a market for the regurgitation of the old. Have there ever been so many heavy bands getting signed, breaking onto play-lists, and appearing bad, live, and nationwide on triple bills around the world? So many shag haircuts? So much loud abysmal dreck? Like just about every other "new" heavy band (and every other "old" heavy band, too), Def Leppard have very little to tell us except they think it's rock and roll and they like it. But unlike such leather-and-studs brigades as (to name only a few) Krokus, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Fastway, Judas Priest, Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, and Queensryche (some of whom seem to have been around since wave one), Def Leppard are not for boys only. This has to do with their prettier than average sound (a little acoustic guitar, lots of cheery background vocals) as well as their prettier than average image (lots of curls and lots of curls). And although I have seen it and heard it all before, I occasionally find myself suc-cumbing to both. But then, I am a very sick woman.

At the same time, as the great rock critic Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, there is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer. Perhaps Def Leppard's youth and energy make their stance an honest and convincing one, at least for the time being. Their best songs--"Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)," "Action! Not Words," "Rock Of Ages"--capture the arena-rock experience and the arena rock and roll fantasy in a way few bands--young or old--ever really do: And "Photograph" is rock and roll fantasy, adolescent fantasy, and fantasy fantasy in a single snap. Live, they sometimes dedicate it to Marilyn Monroe. But when Joe Elliott screams "All I've got is a photograph/I want to touch you," it's not just about trying to make some girl, never mind a dead one--he's addressing the central sex-teen rock and roll tensions of his audience.

Def Leppard have only recently made the transition from one side of the stage to the other--and they still sound excited about it. That is what makes these boys genuinely likable. Def Leppard never play down to or set themselves apart from their audience. Joe Elliott often sounds like he's straining, but this Joe's a good egg who never presents himself as hero or phallic icon. He's just happy to be up there, helping the crowd get off. From the first, his approach--"It could be you/It could be me/It could be anyone"--was more in line with punk populism than the basic pose as preached and practiced by rock frontmen from Michael Philip Jagger to David Lee Roth. At least he's not another one of the "new" Ronnie James Dio models, who always sound like they can't decide whether they'd rather be yodeling or doing a revival of "Naughty Marietta." And, like the band, he's made tremendous improvement. On the debut, he could barely fit his phrasing to the music.

None of the Lepers is a virtuoso, and they may never perfect or maintain the chops to really "take you up to heaven and never let you down." But they state their case far more hookily and heartily than older pros like Kiss, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Heart, or Peter Frampton--to name only a few acts who at one point in their careers also figured out how to put together a primo hard rock song or two and almost as promptly forgot. At this moment in time, Def Leppard fill the void. Enjoy them now before they get fat and bald.