Review: AC/DC's "Power Up"

The formula still works for hard rock's most distinguishable band.

The opening note of the first track of Power Up tells you it’s an AC/DC album and then nothing in the remaining 41 minutes of the record ever tells you anything to the contrary. The pre-eminent hard rock band over the last 45 years, AC/DC has managed with its 17th release to put out yet another in a long line of albums designed to do nothing too fancy — just rock your face off.

Singer Brian Johnson, drummer Phil Rudd, and bassist Cliff Williams are back in the fold with lead guitarist Angus Young and these classics are joined by guitarist Stevie Young — nephew of Angus and his late brother, Malcolm. Johnson, Rudd, and Williams had all left the band at various points either before or during the tour for Rock or Bust, which was also the Australian/Scotch/English band’s first album to feature Stevie. It seemed like Johnson was done forever at the time, with hearing loss forcing him off of the tour and the band replacing him with Axl Rose.

Power Up offers 12 new songs from the band and they sound exactly like one would expect from AC/DC songs. This isn’t an outfit big on innovation. This is a band that keeps finding ways to fit together a couple of heavy guitar chords over a steady bass line, with crashing drums and cymbals and Johnson’s distinctive brand of vocals that sound like the audio equivalent of about 20 cigarette butts floating in an inch of whisky — but in a good way. How Johnson can keep doing what he does with his voice at age 73 has to be some kind of witchcraft, because there is not a noteworthy dip in his performance.

For me, the highlights are “Shot in the Dark,” “Kick You When You’re Down,” and “Witch’s Spell.” In particular, “Kick You When You’re Down,” features a memorable and distinctive chorus that starts with a fun little band singsong of “Oh no!” before giving way to Johnson’s solo chorus vocal. “Demon Fire” is another interesting track that allows Johnson to drop into a deeper register to contrast his usual full-ashtray sound. Somehow, no matter how similar most of the songs sound, they also each manage to find their own personality.

Like all of the other Johnson AC/DC albums, which tend to have less variety from song to song than the early releases with late vocalist Bon Scott, Power Up’s songs could be the soundtrack to a brawl in a biker bar. (Again, I mean this in the best possible way.) Lyrics, as is usually the case with the band, evoke hard livin’ (as opposed to “living,” with a g), some vague kind of danger (“Code Red”), and sexual innuendo (“Money Shot”).

Because there isn’t much difference from song to song, there’s not much point in doing a track-by-track commentary. The album’s dozen songs are all in the three- to four-minute range and the tempo doesn’t change significantly. There are the patented heavy riffs, crashing cymbals, and sizzling guitar solos, glued together by the sheer force of will of the band and Johnson’s unmistakable vocals.

But, despite the propensity of AC/DC to collect similar-sounding songs on its albums, there are some qualitative conclusions that can be drawn. Power Up isn’t Back in Black. There’s nothing on it as good as “Hells Bells,” for example. There’s no centerpiece song like the title track of For Those About to Rock We Salute You. However, listeners who like Flick of the Switch or Black Ice will probably enjoy the new album and anyone who simply goes to the “A” section of their music collection and grabs an AC/DC disc out to play loudly will not notice a big difference between this one and several of those that came before. With AC/DC, more of the same can be a good thing, and I think it is in this case.

There’s nothing new in Power Up that will suddenly convert the band’s detractors into fans. AC/DC has the ability to do one thing, but the band does it well and those who appreciate it are already sold on the formula. It’s Coke, not Orange Coke. But for a band that has been doing more or less the same thing since the Back in Black album 40 years ago, fans also have no real reason to expect an album that sounds this good.