Shaved down to the bone - there are only eight tracks, giving this a lethal efficiency even with a couple of meandering jams - this is a high-voltage, brutal record, filled with "Bad Boy Boogie." It has a bit of a bluesier edge than other AC/DC records, but this is truly the sound of the band reaching its peak. AC/DC can still sound invigorating - and make no mistake they do here, as much as they ever do on a latter-day record - but they just need to tighten up, cut back, crank it up, and sound a little rude again.Let There Be Rock, the fourth AC/DC album - and first to see simultaneous international release - is as lean and mean as the original lineup ever got. Age has turned their tasteless insurgence into vulgar tradition but that's not the problem, nor is it the band's refusal to change because, let's face it, when a band does one thing this well there's no need to change. At their peak, AC/DC recorded their albums quick 'n' dirty and the music felt that way, too. This shift can't be placed on the shoulders of Brian Johnson, who may never have been able to match Bon Scott no matter how much he mimics the man, but it's simply a symptom of the band's massive popularity, where they have no compelling reason to release a record every other year, so they make albums twice a decade, inevitably spending too much time sculpting their recordings when they'd be better off bashing them out. This polished, precise rock & roll is good enough, at least in small doses, but Black Ice delivers a whopping dose, puffed out to nearly an hour, running so long it all kind of washes together - a problem that is endemic to all AC/DC albums after Back in Black.
In fact, as it opens with the "Highway to Hell" boogie of "Rock N Roll Train," the stuttering "Skies on Fire" and "Big Jack," it seems that Black Ice might be the great latter-day AC/DC record the group has yet to deliver, but as the next 12 tracks spool out over the next hour, the album slowly slides into a too-comfortable groove, fueled by too-tight rhythms and guitars that sound loud but not beefy. AC/DC haven't lost their knack for great, simple rock & roll and Black Ice is graced by a few terrific tracks. It's the eternal AC/DC paradox: at its core, their music is brutal and primitive, but their records are slick, overly cautious, and bloated, stretching out to 15 tracks when they should be no longer than ten.
He encourages the band to add a bit of color here and there, so they grace "Stormy May Day" with some sloppy slide guitar and turn "Rock N' Roll Dream" into an expansive neo-ballad cousin of Bad Company's "Rock N Roll Fantasy," but O'Brien's crisp, colorful production only emphasizes how AC/DC could stand to be a little less careful on record. Rick Rubin couldn't change this pattern on 1995's Ballbreaker and Brendan O'Brien can't change it on 2008's Black Ice. AC/DC never rush to cut a record they wait until Angus Young has collected enough riffs to hammer out an album's worth of songs, then they file in one by one to lay down their tracks with a big-budget producer, who inevitably gives them a clean, mammoth sound that's no different than what came before. They have nothing left to prove, so perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that their albums lack any sense of urgency or motivation. They see no triumph in their longevity, they long ago dismissed not only the idea of artistic statements but the very notion of artistic growth: they aren't good or bad, they simply are. Unlike any other band of their stature, AC/DC truly don't care about the world at large.
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