keepers 2
keeper avg .182
This first AC/DC studio album since 2008 is noticeably short (11 songs in under 35 minutes), but when no one song exceeds 4 minutes why overstay your welcome. The good news is that in addition to lots of the Young brothers' clean and clear guitar bite, Brian Johnson sounds at his best (meaning sounding the least like a constipated chipmunk) since Back In Black. I mean he almost sounds like a normal human at times. Of course this is AC/DC we're talking about, so no great artistic leaps are likely. Four chords only get you so far, but the Youngs make excellent use of them in the awesome title song's**** machine-gun opening riff. The call-and-response structuring of "Rock The House"**** recalls "Black Dog", but I guess that's a pretty public domain move, and when Johnson's wailing fails to keep the riffing at bay - it's ON. Other high points include some deft double-stop picking in "Play Ball", the slow-building swagger of "Hard Times", the energetic "Baptism By Fire", and the menacing, head-banging opening riff of the David Lee Roth-silly "Emission Control". While no Back In Black, the writing is usually consistent - the only sour notes being "Dog of War", "Rock The Blues Away", meat-headed even by AC/DCs standards, and the half-baked "Sweet Candy". But if events conspire to make this AC/DCs last effort (at least the last with most of the band's 30-plus year classic line-up) it's not a bad note to go out on.
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