When I last left AC/DC, with their bloated album title, For Those About To Rock We Salute You, I wasn't necessarily blown away. The album was mediocre at best, and lacked anything really worth adding to my shuffle list.
Still invested, I turned my sights to 1983's Flick Of The Switch. However, my excitement level quickly dropped as I continued reading up on the band's history. Let's just say, Flick didn't necessarily turn any heads. Critical reviews considered the album to be underdeveloped and unmemorable, while one critic even stated that they "had made the same album nine times". Guns For Hire would be the only song to reach the Billboard Hot 100, and it would stall at number eighty-four.
Further, the band's own label hated the album art. While the brothers wanted to feature an embossed finish, much like their Back In Black release, the label refused, stating there were no hits on the album worth investing the money in.
While recording the album, tensions between Malcom Young and Phil Rudd would reach a boiling point, resulting in a physical altercation. The result was Rudd being fired, replaced by Simon Wright, selected among the seven hundred individuals who auditioned. Though Wright would appear in the multiple promotional music videos for the album, he doesn't appear to have actually recorded any of the music for it.
The lineup of Johnson, Williams, Wright, and the Young brothers would finish out the decade with 1985's Fly On The Wall, and 1988's Blow Up Your Video. However, before we get to those latter two, we first need to take a pause, and actually play through Flick of The Switch. Just based on the history alone, it's not off to a good start.
As Rising Power kicked off, I was surprised to find my head bobbing, and my toes tapping. Admittedly, it made me feel the critics might have been wrong about this one, and even shifted my overall mood about it.
The energy of Flick Of The Switch stayed high, with thunderous drums, screeching vocals, and edgy guitars. However, I did ultimately see what the critics, and even the label were talking about. No hits. By track five, I couldn't even have told you how any of the songs went, to and include the first, which initially had me rethinking my opinion.
Overall, I think I'm with the critics on this one. It's decent, but it's been done before. There are no hits, and no hooks to really keep you invested. It's a solid rock album though. Tracks, Rising Power, Deep In The Hole, Bedlam In Belgium are adequate, but nothing to really write home about. They'll probably make their way to my shuffle list, where they'll inevitably be skipped for the remainder of all eternity when they come around.
In continuing my reading of AC/DC, it appears that 1985's Fly On The Wall fared no better critically, so I'd be lying if I said I had high hopes at this point. Mind you, I don't hate what I've been hearing. I guess I was just hoping that I'd become a fan of the band, which simply isn't happening. Well, they've got two more albums to prove me wrong. Three, if you count their 1986 soundtrack to Maximum Overdrive. But, we'll get into all of that next time.
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS September 26, 1981 |
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| THIS WEEK ON THE CHARTS September 26, 1987 |
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