AC/DC - Highway to Hell
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CD Details
Artist: AC/DCEdition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-02-18
Music Label: Sony
Soundtracks:
- Highway to Hell
- Girls Got Rhythm
- Walk All Over You
- Touch Too Much
- Beating Around the Bush
- Shot Down in Flames
- Get It Hot
- If You Want Blood (You've Got It)
- Love Hungry Man
- Night Prowler
Music reviews of Highway to Hell
Music Review: A killer song, no filler...just solid rock. 85/100
Rating: 4 Stars
It took me a while to buy this album. Don't get me wrong...I love this band...in fact I consider them to be the best rock band of all time and only behind The Beatles as far as all musical acts are concerned. Why this trepidation? Well, as a kid, I was used to buying an AC/DC album and knowing that there would be a couple of great songs on it and that I would discover some good songs that I hadn't heard before. With "Highway to Hell", I only really knew the title track...sure, it's great, but does this album have anything else decent on it? Yes. Here's my pick of the best tracks on this album:
Highway to Hell: THE classic track off of this album. AC/DC is yet to release a fully fledged greatest hits album ("Who made who" comes closest to this), but the title track is an automatic selection of any hypothetical compilation. AC/DC has rarely come close to the celebration of living life hard and to its fullest as in this song. It's a classic for its grating, typically AC/DC guitar riff/introduction. *N.B. an ANNOYING feature of this song is that the riff is lopsided...if you listen to it on headphones, the audio for the riff is tilted to the right hand speaker. Oddly, when I heard this song on the radio, the 'tilt' was on the left hand side. This suggests to me that the remaster was flawed. One of the GREAT things about AC/DC classics is how you get one guitar crunching out a riff and then getting joined by another guitar on the other speaker. As it stands, the sound on this song is almost as bad as those early, faux stereo songs the Beatles used to churn out (and that's because they really didn't have proper stereo when they started out). Really, I see this 'tilt' as a mistake which should get fixed. It might be less noticeable if you listen to it on loudspeakers.
There really aren't any other 'classics' on this album, but of the rest, the most solid songs are:
Walk all over you: has a promising intro...moody. This song does seem to have some unintended distortion on the guitar. I like the lead guitar work in this song as well as the backing vocals, which is very good, in AC/DC's signature, laddish way.
Touch to much: I must have heard this song somewhere along the line as I always thought it could be a good song. Probably didn't hear it on the radio, as ONLY the title track seems to get played...at least nowadays, here in Australia. Good stereo stage...must stop whingeing about the lack of this on the title track! Excellent backing vocals too.
The two songs above are the kind of songs that grow you. In other words they might not have the immediate sex appeal of classic AC/DC songs but they are the kind of songs that would be welcome on any compilation by this band.
The last song of particular interest on this album for me is:
Night Prowler: lead singer Bon Scott sounds particularly phlegmy, especially for the intro. Lead guitar is REALLY soulful in sound here. I like the backing vocals here too, and it's not just the typical echo-ing which the band is so fond of...they get their own lines too. Lyrical construction in this song is good too. It's quite menacing. Apparently it's not meant to be, according to the band, but it is. Think I heard that this song is there version of the Rolling Stones' "Midnight rambler"...and after just now looking at the lyrics to that song, they are BOTH menacing...so, I don't see how AC/DC can get criticised for a song like this and not the Stones!
Anyway, despite my initial misgivings on this album, I think it is an essential purchase. This is pretty much the first AC/DC album where I've noticed that they actually do have a bass guitar player...it's quite noticeable in songs like "Shot down in flames" and "Love hungry man".
For me, AC/DC are the greatest guitar act of all time. There are Malcolm Young's crunching riffs on rhythm guitar, and brother Angus' equally exceptional lead guitar work...whether the songs be rock, rock'n'roll, boogie or whathaveyou. To the uninitiated who claim that this band has only ever released one song, multiple times, this puts the lie to that claim. There is a lot of variety on this album.
The boys' and Bon Scott's lyric writing is also in exceptional form here. In some songs the lyrics are a bit dated...e.g. "Night Prowler" lightens the tone at the end with Bon referencing American comedian Robin Williams' character "Mork" from the tv show "Mork and Mindy". You have to be of a certain age to get that ad-libbery. Bon also has some fun at the end of "Shot down in flames". The boys don't take themselves too seriously, which is good.
Description of Highway to Hell
AC/DC's 1979 album digitally remastered and reissued in a special digipak plus a 16 page full color booklet containing all original album art, many unpublished photos, classic memorabilia and new 2003 liner notes. Epic.What Highway to Hell has that Back in Black doesn't is Bon Scott, AC/DC's original lead singer who died just months after this album was released. Scott had a rusty, raspy, scream of a voice, like he might break into a coughing fit at any moment. In other words, on crunchy, hook-heavy metal classics like the title track, and on "Get It Hot" which is more roadhouse rock than metal, he had the perfect instrument for such wild-living anthems. Too perfect, it turned out. --David Cantwell
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