Back In Black is the fantastic album that you would expect the second highest seller of all time to be. Despite the death of Bon Scott, the band picks up exactly where they left off on Highway To Hell, adding a bit more pop sensibility and slicker production. In spite of those changes, Back In Black still rocks harder than anything written by most bands. Truly, no one else writes rock & roll quite like this. “Back In Black” and “You Shook Me All Night Long” are among the finest songs the Young brothers have ever written, and “Hells Bells” and “Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” are quite good as well. In fact, the weakest track on the disc is “Shake A Leg”, which could easily have been the standout track on a good album.

Brian Johnson does not quite have Bon Scott’s growling vocals down, but his own singing style complements the band’s high voltage riffing nearly as well and is much more suited to the mainstream audience that this album brought them. What the band does not lose with Johnson is Scott’s sense of debauchery and deliciously euphemistic, barely veiled sexual imagery. “Have A Drink On Me” asserts that the hard-partying band is unrepentant after the alcohol related death of their late vocalist, while “Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” continues the band’s tradition of songs glorifying the music itself. You just can’t find double entendre like “Let me put my love into you, babe / Let me put my love on the line / Let me put my love into you, babe / Let me cut your cake with my knife” and “She’s using her head again / I’m just givin’ the dog a bone” (one can only hope the “dog” is as figurative as the “bone” surely is) anywhere else.

The riffs are, as always, some of the heaviest boogie-rock around, and the generally stripped-down arrangements highlight them well. A good test for a supposed expert in hard rock is to tell “Hells Bells” from Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” based on only their opening bell peals. An absolute classic from a true classic band.