A brief review of AC/DC's new album

Which, if memory serves, was called one of the following two things:

Highway to High Rock Voltage and Roll Hell (All Night Long) (We Salute You) (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)

or

Milking the Money Cow, Volume XVI

I honestly can't remember.

The nice thing about AC/DC is that you know what you get. The not-so-nice thing about AC/DC is that you know what you get. There aren't any real surprises on Rock Back in Dirty Deeds, and the single entendres are as predictable as ever the jokes in a Roger Moore Bond film, which generally tracks with the last time this band ever really shook things up.

Okay, that was unfair.

There are at least two songs on Let There Be A Long Way To The Top For Those About to Rock that demonstrate a hitherto-untapped Zeppelin influence (or at least what I choose to assume is a Zeppelin influence). Singer Brian Johnson still sounds like a parrot with laryngitis (to borrow the phrase from someone else), but this parrot sounds healthier than it has on AC/DC's previous three studio efforts (or, to put it another way, since 1990). Stevie Young does a good enough job filling in for his ailing uncle Malcolm that you probably wouldn't notice unless someone told you. And they included this picture in the digital booklet, which is rather touching:

Pictured: the guitar on which half your childhood was composed.

Ultimately it is the band's best effort since 1990's The Razors Edge, and the filler here is arguably better than the filler there... but this is AC/DC and comparing non-single songs is an exercise in killing time.

In the end Oh who am I kidding?! It's AC/DC, go buy the damn album already.