AC/DC — Black Ice (review)

AC/DC — Black Ice album cover Album · 2008 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
2/5 ·
vmagistr
Many many years ago, when I started earning money, which could buy something more than spare batteries for my mp3 player, I was very sorry that the tickets for the AC/DC concert in Prague were sold out in a moment and I didn't manage to get my own. I knew only a few songs from the band at that time, but I believed them to be rock masters of the stage. No way I knew their current album Black Ice then, I was listening to a best-of their (mostly) 70s hits. I didn't get to the aforementioned CD until a few years later - at one time, various sell-offs were just full of that in Czech Republic. Actually, it may have been my first contact with a complete album from the "Johnson" period, but the differentness compared to the Bon Scott tracks was quite a handicap, especially at first.

Years later, now that I can get to grips with the AC/DC discography, I gave Black Ice another chance. Instead of a CD with compressed sound, I use a vinyl-rip form, but my impressions haven't changed much even after all these years. In my opinion, the album is driven by the overblown opening quartet. I see Rock 'n' Roll Train, despite its stumbling riff, as a clear hit, the likes of which the band hasn't managed since Thunderstruck. I also enjoy the Big Jack chorus and the more laid-back Anything Goes a lot, and in the chopped kilts and sparkly guitar refrains of Skies on Fire I again hear echoes of a path the Young brothers ultimately didn't take. But it gets noticeably weaker from there - especially in some tracks, AC/DC's combination of mid-tempo and lack of catchy musical ideas created a boredom to death for me.

I can highlight rather small things: the bold "synth" sounding guitar line in Smash 'n' Grab, the interesting guitar-bass interplay in the verses of She Likes Rock 'n' Roll or the riffs in the closing title track Black Ice. Just when I feel a hint of an imaginative or at least catchy melody (Wheels), Johnson goes down a completely uninteresting path for me in the next bar, and the catchy rhythm of Rocking All the Way are killed by the melodic "blackout" in the chorus. Then, without exception, I completely dislike alle the here unnamed songs - if I might have enjoyed some of them before, I can't take anything away from them nowadays.

Round and round it seems to be a real bummer with the four songs I like from the album and can enjoy repeatedly. In the future, I'll probably have a lot of second thoughts about embarking on that hour-long anabasis again, and instead "make" a decent four-song EP out of Black Ice. All in all, it comes out to two stars, and I think I'm still pretty merciful.
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