One of the outstanding questions concerning the compressive behaviour of brittle materials concerns the failure wave observed in glasses. While much work has centred around relatively open structure, low density glasses such as borosilicate and soda lime, none has addressed the response of highly filled lead glasses. This work presents the results of a series of planted impact experiments carried out on the lead glass DEDF. This material was shocked in uniaxial strain and the longitudinal and lateral components of stress and strain were measured. The failure wave, observed in lower density glasses, was observed in this material but its velocity reached that of the shock at less than twice the Hugoniot elastic limit (HEL).