AC/DC – For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

Aaaand as promised, we are back to the series of gratitude posts!

Brother Scott, our benevolent Heavy Metal Overlord sent me this one, and it’s a bit of a dark horse. Read on to find out why I say that!

The title track is a stone AC/DC classic, full of bluesy swagger. I like to think of it as their 1812 Overture, I mean, why doesn’t every truly great song have frickin’ CANNONS? … And then, when it double-times it, the party really gets underway. Yummy.

Put The Finger On You is another great rocker with, if my ears are hearing it rightly, just a little bit of a pop sensibility to it. It ain’t much, and it’s not a bad thing, but it’s there (to me). Let’s Get It Up (haha that’s what she said!) proves that , as it goes, this record is setting a groove. I’ll get to more on that in a little bit. Now, this is never going to be a ‘classic’ track, but it still totally deserves to be in their discography.

Inject The Venom’s teaser intro made me hope that it’s gonna take right off at double-speed when it hits… but nope. They go for slower and heavier, and that’s cool too. It’s a great song, but all the stopping and starting makes it feel a bit pasted together. That said, that same style works damn well for the solo section, the interplay with the band before it becomes a typical solo run. Playful and bluesy!

Snowballed… oh man, these guys are the masters of double-entendre. This has full-on screaming vocals over a faster rocker. Fun! And then we get to Evil Walks, which I think was built to be a Greatest Hit, but for whatever reason it’s not and it oughta be. I really liked this song. Really not sure why it isn’t a staple song for them.

C.O.D. is another undeniable AC/DC track. You know what I mean, it’s that sound. You know, as this record plays I’m really getting a feel for the overall sense they were going after, here. And you know what, it works. It’s weird to say, since it all sounds like AC/DC, but this record has an identity all its own. I think I made a mistaken (unconscious) assumption that all of their stuff was just more of this same. And sound-wise, it could persuasively argued that a lot of it is. But this record is, overall, slower, heavier, definitely bluesy. Its own beast. I like it!

Breaking The Rules stomps along fairly gently (for them), which is more fuel to my argument (above). Some would say it is too slow, or not hard enough. Those folks aren’t listening closely enough. This is a great one, hiding in plain sight. Night Of The Long Knives threw me. It is AC/DC’s Aerosmith track. Play it, you’ll hear it. Ha, fun! Slinky! Not sure which NotLK they mean, but whichever it is, it’s still a fun song.

And lastly we have Spellbound, another comparitively slow one and, at this point, spellbound is what I am with this record. It took stones for a band like this to make an entire record like this. There’ve always been tracks here or there, but a whole album? Maybe there is, I haven’t heard them all (yet). It’s still them, it still rocks, but it is by and large way more laid-back than other efforts (from the same era) that I’ve recently heard. I like that about it, because it allows their blues and swagger to come to the fore without feeling like I’m being pummelled by the hit machine. 

This one gets both metal horns held high. \m/  \m/

Thanks heaps, Scott!