| Even this early in their career, AC/DC realised that their brutally reductive take on rock & roll amounted to perfection of the form, and they've been reluctant to tamper with a winning formula ever since. High Voltage, their debut album, is remarkable in the context of AC/DC's vast, awesomely single-minded discography for containing what remains AC/DC's lone foray into experimentation in nearly three decades: the delightfully incongruous bagpipe solo in the opening track, "It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock & Roll)". Elsewhere, business as usual: drums like the plods of a lumbering dinosaur, bass like the ominous rumbleof a waking volcano, the 17-year-old Angus Young's guitars as crude and effective as circular saws. Vocalist Bon Scott is on fine, defiantly self-aggrandising form: the title track and "TNT" were two of the most irresistibly, cretinous anthems he would ever write, which is high praise indeed. --Andrew Mueller |
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