rock the roll

Lesser bands might have been put off their stride by the death of their lead singer, but not AC/DC. No sooner had Bon Scott met his whiskey-sodden end in 1980 than AC/DC recruited a new singer, Brian Johnson--who sounded almost exactly like Scott--and released, in Back in Black, the biggest-selling album of their career. For Those About to Rock...We Salute You is a suitably triumphant follow-up. The cannon-punctuated title track--the most auspicious marriage of music and artillery since Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture"--still provides a spectacular finale to AC/DC concerts. For Those About to Rock also confirmed that Johnson's lyrical preoccupations were broadly congruent with those of his predecessor: "Let's Get It Up" and "Inject the Venom" are as subtle as their titles sound. This is a record Beavis and Butthead would describe as "cool"--and, as usual, they'd be right. --Andrew Mueller