Back in Black

AC/DC

Track	Score
Hell's Bells	4	5
Shoot to Thrill	4	5
What do you do for Money Honey	1	4
Givin the Dog a Bone	0	4
Let me put my Love into you	3	4
Back in Black	3	4
You Shook me all Night Long	3	4
Have a Drink on me	2	4
Shake a Leg	2	4
Rock and Roll ain't Noise Pollution	2	4
Total:	24	42
57%

In 1979 AC/DC's lead singer, Bon Scott died, from drinking too much. His bandmated banded together despite this tragedy, and created a mighty tribute to him in the form of Back in Black. Mainly it was about drinking though. They found a new singer as well: Brian Johnson, who would front the band from then until now, although he was arguably a worse singer. This album by the way is the highest selling rock album of all time (Michael Jackson doesn't count), so it must be pretty good right? Let's get started.
The first song, might actually be one of the peaks of the album from a thinking man's point of view. Hell's Bells starts fairly obviously with the ringing of a bell. Then in comes the guitar, and eventually the drums. But this is only the intro sequence. Soon the guitar changes, and the rest of the instruments come in. And so do the vocals. Brain Johnson's voice is pretty grating after only a minute of listening to him. But other than that it's hard to complain, and it does have a sort of uniqueness amongst the AC/DC repertoire.
This is followed by the longest (not by much) track, Shoot to Thrill. This one starts with most of the instruments from the beginning. Unfortunately the riffs at the beginning are the same as the ones at the end. The turnaround is pretty cool though.
This is then followed by the much simpler What do you do for Money Honey. This has the same simple chord change again and again for the most of this song. The solo is probably the only good part of the song in my mind. The lyrics might be interesting, but trying to listen to them certainly isn't enjoyable.
And then we have Givin the Dog a Bone. This song is quite unfortunately more repetitive than the last one, and it never quite manages to win me over, with it's combination of a generally boring riff and the same line over and over again, brought together by no real changes in the song.
But then we move to Let me put my Love into you, which has a cool dual guitar riff at the beginning at least. And it changes riff at quite a few points during the song. And it has another good solo. And that ends side one.
And the first song on side two is the title song (how often does that happen). And with it we return to the quality of the first songs on the album. Back in Black starts with that famous riff, and continues with a good performance all around. The instruments in this are heavy enough to almost screen out the vocals altogether. The only problem with this song, if any, is that it overstays its welcome a bit.
Of course it leaves the next song sounding quite soppy. You Shook me all Night Long is probably home to the best riff on the album though, and of course a great solo (if you're only good at one thing, you might as well be good at it). This is simple like some of the earlier songs, but this is an example of simplicity done well (probably on the strength of that riff).
And so the third track on side two is Have a Drink on Me. Compared to the last few songs it seems rather tame, and rather unnoticeable. It has the same trademark guitar work by the Young brothers, and the rhythm work is as steady as always, but there's nothing really special about this song. Nothing to really fault against it though.
Shake a Leg is the second last track. It starts out rather ordinarily, but when the guitars come in we're treated to another great riff. Unfortunately, once again this suffers from drawing on too long without enough musical changes. And they don't play the riff enough in my mind.
And finally we have Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution. It starts playing the riff softly while we listen to a spoken word verse (which is a good thing I guess). Then it does it again only with the full band behind it. And it keeps it up for the rest of the song.
I would say without question that this is (usually) an overrated album. However I would also say that it is a very good album. It's really one of those ones where you have to listen to it yourself and think about how much you like it. So why did I give it such a low score? Blame the singer...
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