When I was young, I was a huge AC/DC fan. I started listening to them probably around the time I got my driver's license, maybe a year or so earlier, and I remember driving around in my Dad's tiny blue Ford Fiesta blaring AC/DC at full volume. I loved it, while everybody else probably thought I was a complete dork. Good times.

Fast forward 25 years, and I recently realised that apart from hearing the occasional song here and there on the radio, I haven't really put on an AC/DC record in years. Shockingly, I never even listened to the two latest albums, apart from checking out the singles when they first came out. AC/DC always stayed true to who they are, and the joke goes that everything sounds the same and they just recorded the exact same album 17 times. Is this true? There's only one way to find out. Here are all 17 AC/DC studio albums in chronological order, from oldest to newest. Let's travel back to Australia in 1975 and get started.

Contents

High Voltage (1975)

★★☆☆☆

Oh dear. I know I heard this album before, a long time ago. But now I also know why I haven't listened to it since, and why I only ever listened to it maybe a handful of times to begin with. They were very young when they recorded this and they were clearly still figuring out their sound and what kind of band they wanted to be. It feels very "proto-AC/DC" in that you can already hear glimpses of what was to come, but it wasn't fully realised yet. Case in point: There's a ballad on the album, called Love Song. How many ballads by AC/DC do you know? Exactly. It's not that good.

Many songs are just a bit too long for what they have to offer, the lyrics are pretty juvenile at times (though this is AC/DC, so they aren't going to get much better) and it's just not a very strong album overall. But hey, everybody has to start somewhere, and it put them on the map and kick-started their career, so I can't complain too much. Just don't record any more ballads, please.

Favourite song

You Ain't Got a Hold on Me.

T.N.T. (1975)

★★★★★

Now that's more like it. As far as I'm concerned, AC/DC starts here. Phil Rudd has arrived on the drums and with him the signature AC/DC groove. Almost every song is a classic and many of them they've kept playing live throughout the years and still play in every show. The Jack is on here (and I had completely forgotten that the lyrics on the album are way different and much tamer than the ones Bon sang live), as is High Voltage, T.N.T. and It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll). With School Days there's also a Chuck Berry cover on the album which makes perfect sense because Chuck Berry is Angus Young's big idol. Which you can not only hear in his playing, but also see on stage. You know the duck walk that Angus does, where he hops around on stage on one foot? That's Chuck's move.

This album is an absolute classic, and they were just getting started.

Favourite Song

It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock'n'Roll). It rocks, it grooves, and it has bagpipes. What more do you want?

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)

★★★★☆

Another classic album, but I was surprised to find that I actually liked the previous one a little better. There's still a lot of great songs on here like the title track Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Problem Child and of course Jailbreak, and they're also trying some different things here, like the song Squealer which starts slow and calm and then builds up more and more momentum as it progresses which fits the lyrical theme (it's about Sex, what else?). There's also a surprisingly quiet and slow blues song called Ride On. I think this was in my 'midnight' playlist in my teenage years - as the night became quieter, the music I listened to became calmer and with more interesting emotional themes.

There are a few tracks on here however which don't quite resonate with me, like Ain't no Fun (Waiting 'round to be a Millionaire) and Big Balls, which is about, you guessed it, big balls. The ones in ballrooms, supposedly... that song also doesn't have an ending, it just suddenly falls apart and then the next song starts, as if they had reached the end of what they'd written and didn't know how to continue.

Not a bad album, but also not their best in my opinion.

Favourite Song

Jailbreak.

Let there be Rock (1977)

★★★★★

In the beginning,
Back in 1955...

This album is killer. So many great songs on there, among them of course the title track Let there be Rock. It's one of their best songs ever, period. The verse are just bass, drums and vocals, and they are a mini-masterclass of how a rhythm section should work. These guys are locked in with an unbelievable drive. And of course the big Angus solo towards the end... it doesn't get better than that. And then there's Dog eat Dog, Bad Boy Boogie, Hell ain't a bad Place to be and the all time classic Whole Lotta Rosie, all on this one album. It's damn near perfect, the only song that's a bit more meh is Crabsody in Blue, which is a slow blues and is kind of boring to be honest. But one dud on an album full of otherwise absolute killer songs is fine. Yeah. Enough said. Go listen to it, you won't regret it.

Favourite Song

It has to be Let there be Rock, no doubt. And check out the video where Bon Scott appears as a preacher!

Powerage (1978)

★★★★★

I haven't listened to this album in years, probably over a decade. Maybe even two decades? I really don't remember... but I put it on and found that I could sing pretty much every lyric and every riff, and when a song ended I knew which one was going to come next. I must have listened to this album a lot, and for good reason. It's amazing. It's got a bunch of absolute headbangers like Rock'n'Roll Damnation, Riff Raff, Sin City and Up to my Neck in you which I never get tired of hearing, and the remaining songs aren't any less catchy either. Maybe with the exception of Kicked in the Teeth which feels like a less good version of Let there be Rock from the previous album. But what did I just say about one dud on an otherwise great album?

On this album, Cliff Williams joins the band as the new bass player, replacing Mark Evans who played on the previous albums. Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams are a match made in heaven and they form one of the tightest and grooviest rhythm sections in rock history. He will stay in the band until his retirement in 2023, making him the longest-serving band member after Angus Young. His addition to the band also means that even though AC/DC are the quintessential Australian rock band, from this point on they will never again have more than one Australian-born band member, Phil Rudd. Angus and Malcolm Young and Bon Scott were all born in Scotland, and Cliff Williams is English.

Favourite Song

Up to my Neck in you.

Highway to Hell (1979)

★★★★★

Oh boy! This is the album that got me into AC/DC, and into heavier music in general. The gateway drug. I remember the first time I heard Highway to Hell (the song) I was very confused because I was used to the 'polished' sound of bands like Queen, ELO, Elton John and so on. And here were these guys with their ugly scratchy guitars, no keyboards, and some dude with an awful voice shrieking at the top of his lungs... who the hell likes that? Well as it turns out, I do. Who knew.

Because of this history, this album will always have a special place in my heart. But it's also just a really fucking good album! They made a huge leap on this album in terms of songwriting, no doubt due to the input of producer Mutt Lange who they worked with for the first time here. The previous albums were all great and fun and hard rocking, and this album is all of that too, but it's also interesting because the songs are more diverse than ever. Highway to Hell, Girls got Rhythm, Shot down in Flames, If you want Blood (you've got it) are all great songs, and they are all very distinct from one another. No song just blends into the next, they all have their own unique character. Which is nowhere more evident than on the final song Night Prowler which is just dripping with atmosphere. It's hard to decide whether or not this is their best album, but to me it's their most interesting and well-rounded one for sure.

Unfortunately it will be the last album with Bon Scott, who after a night of heavy drinking in London passed out in a friend's car and never woke up again on February 19th, 1980 at the age of only 33 years old. He burned bright, but he also burned out fast, and it's a shame.

Interlude

Since we're at a turning point in the band's career now, I want take a quick break and address something that's been bothering me for literally decades, and that's when people brush off AC/DC as 'simple music'. Even musicians do that sometimes, which I find baffling. "The drummer plays the same simple beat on every song". "The bass player plays the same note throughout the entire song". "They use the same three chords for all songs", and so on. Granted, they're no Rush or Dream Theater, but if you take some time to really engage with their music, you'll find plenty of songs which are far more complex than what some people might want to make you believe. Just listen to the previous album as a prime example.

In addition to this, music is not just about the notes that are being played. It's just as much about the feeling, the groove, the swing, the drive or whatever else you might want to call it. It's about how the notes are played as much as which notes are played. Even on the simplest of songs where the drummer play just a simple 4/4 backbeat, the guitars play the proverbial three chords and the bass player plays nothing but the root of the chord in an 1/8th notes pattern, listen to how they're playing it. Listen to the groove of the drums, to the swing of the 1/8th notes on the hi-hat. Listen to how the bass player locks in perfectly with the drums and plays with the same feeling and swing, forming one of the tightest rhythm sections you will find anywhere in rock music. Put on some headphones and listen to how precise Malcolm plays his parts on rhythm guitar. Malcolm Young in particular is in my opinion one of the most underrated guitar players of all time, because while he might often 'just' play a simple pattern on an A chord for two minutes straight, he does so with absolute precision and perfect timing. Just listen to this, and then try playing it the same way. And keep in mind that he played this live in front of 70.000 people.

AC/DC's music might seem simple on the surface, yes. And anyone who knows three chords on guitar might be able to play AC/DC - badly.

But playing it well? I tell ya folks - it's harder than it looks.

Back in Black (1980)

★★★★★

After Bon Scott's untimely death, the band was incredibly quick to regroup and within a few months found a new singer in Brian Johnson from the Newcastle-based band Geordie and wrote, recorded and released a new album. And what an album it is. This thing is a masterpiece! There is not a bad note on it. If you ask me which one my favourite AC/DC album is, it's this one. Every song is a banger, and Brian delivers a near superhuman vocal performance here. Unpopular opinion: I prefer Brian over Bon. There's just something about his voice that I like more than Bon's voice.

What else can I say about the album? Hells Bells, You shook me all Night long, Back in Black... I could just put the entire track list here. All of them are great. Excuse me while I go listen to it again before I continue with the next one.

Btw, have you ever heard Brian's old band Geordie? I don't think anyone in early 1980 would have guessed that this guy was going to be AC/DC's new singer.

Favourite Song

Hells Bells. The bell, the riff, the vocals... I could listen to this 50 times in a row and never grow tired of it.

For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) (1981)

★★★☆☆

This album always fell flat for me. Back in Black was perfect, the songwriting was top notch and it sounded amazing. This one is a step back in every regard. The songs feel kind of flat and uninspired and it also doesn't sound nearly as good; particularly Brian is mixed so low that he sounds as if he's ten metres behind the band and then an additional five metres away from the microphone. It's weird, especially considering that it was produced by the same guy (Mutt Lange) as the last two albums, which sounded great.

And the songs... For Those About to Rock is a classic of course and the one that they end every show with, with the cannons firing and everything. But the rest? I just finished listening to the album five minutes ago and I've already forgotten most of it. Nothing is really memorable. No wild riffs, no big choruses. Everything sounds a bit bland and uninspired here. I think that's all I can say about this one. Unfortunately, this is a theme which will now continue throughout the rest of the decade...

Favourite Song

For Those About to Rock (We Salute You). I'm linking a live recording here because that's where the song really shines.

Flick of the Switch (1983)

★★★★☆

First reaction: It's better than I remember! I haven't heard this one in decades and I don't remember it being good, but it's... well, not great, but I enjoyed it more than the previous one. The band was fed up with Mutt Lange and so they decided to produce the album themselves. This album is widely criticised for its dry sound, but I still think it's a bit better than For Those About to Rock, even though I have to admit, the guitars and drums sound bone dry and a bit unexciting as a result. It definitely doesn't sound as good as the albums from the 70s, which is weird because it's still two guitars, bass, drums and a guy who screams. If they could make it sound great in 77, there's no excuse for making it sound worse in 83.

Anyway. The songs. Most of them feel like a continuation of the ones from the last album - a bit too slow and uninspired for what we've gotten used to from AC/DC. They seem to have forgotten that they are great at writing riffs and instead deliver mostly sustained chords without much variation. There are a few exceptions, thankfully. Flick of the Switch has some nice riffs, but feels a little too slow overall. Landslide is good though, uptempo and with some good riffing, and the last song Brain Shake finally has that old familiar drive and feels like a proper AC/DC song.

Overall I'd say the album is okay. Not fantastic, but fun to listen to.

Favourite Song

Brain Shake. It grooves.

Fly on the Wall (1985)

★★★☆☆

Tensions were high during the recording of Flick of the Switch and escalated to drummer Phil Rudd being fired after laying down his drum tracks, being replaced by English drummer Simon Wright who was only in his early 20s when he joined the band. With him, AC/DC is now essentially a 100% British band which happened to be founded in Australia.

This is one of AC/DC's worst reviewed albums, and I can see why. It sounds bad, the guitars sound kind of scratchy and unpleasant, the drums on the other hand sound dull and lifeless and Brian sounds as if he got his balls stuck in his zipper and was screaming in the other room while the band was recording, and they just left it like that.

The songs are about the same quality as those on the last album. Some are good, some not so much. Fly on the Wall is not bad, as is Shake your Foundations. Playing with Girls is pretty good, while Danger might be the most boring song they've ever recorded. The rest is kind of meh, pretty forgettable. The lyrics are terrible (guess what Sink the Pink is about), but thanks to the horrible mix you can't understand them anyway, so that works out okay.

For this album they recorded kind of a short film, which is really just a bunch of music videos loosely connected with a nonsensical story. It's not particularly good, but if you're into "so bad it's good" movies with terrible acting, you might get a kick out of this.

Favourite Song

Playing with Girls. Despite the lyrics :)

Who Made Who (1986)

★★★☆☆

Speaking of "so bad it's good", this is the soundtrack to Stephen King's movie Maximum Overdrive in which machines become sentient and start killing people. This movie is legendary for being completely insane in every imaginable way. Reportedly Stephen King was coked out of his mind the whole time he made the movie (and during most of the 80s in general). But he wanted AC/DC on the soundtrack, and so they penned three new songs for the movie and contributed several old ones as well. This album is the soundtrack to Maximum Overdrive with the three new songs Who Made Who, D.T. and Chase the Ace and a number of previously released songs.

The good news is that they fixed the scratchy sound form the previous album. The bad news is that now everything sounds dull. I really don't know what they were doing in the 80s. They had their sound figured out in the 70s and now they kept messing with it and never got it right.

Anyway, the three new songs? Who Made Who is nice, a bit slow maybe but I like it. D.T. is boring as hell, but Chase the Ace (both instrumentals, a first for AC/DC) has a nice drive to it. The old songs are great, but we already knew this. Overall not an essential album.

Favourite Song

Only considering the three new songs, Who Made Who. It's the best of them.

Blow up your Video (1988)

★★★☆☆

80s AC/DC isn't making things easy. I never noticed this before, but now listening to all those albums back to back I realise that my verdict is pretty much the same for all albums of the decade (with the exception of Back in Black): There's a few good songs on there, but also a lot of filler and the sound is subpar, worse than the albums from the 70s (but at least better than Fly on the Wall). So there's not much new that I can really say about this album. It's more of the same.

Heatseeker and That's the Way I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll are awesome, and I enjoyed Nick of Time and This Means War, I was still whistling the verse riff two hours later. The rest is not really worth mentioning.

All in all you could probably compress the last five albums into one, squeeze out all the filler and end up with one really good album.

So, am I going to listen to these albums again at some point? Probably yes. They're not terrible, and there's good stuff on each one. But they're definitely a step down in quality compared to the Bon Scott era and Back in Black. I criticised them a lot here, but I still like all of them. I just don't recommend listening to all of them in one go, maybe that's a bit much.

Moving on, let's see what the 90s had to offer.

Favourite Song

Heatseeker. I remember listening to this at full volume in the car when I was like 18, 19 years old and having a blast.

The Razors Edge (1990)

★★★★☆

Finally, fucking finally after 10 years we get an album that just sounds good! I can't believe I have to say this, but going through the albums from the 80s was quite a slog at times. But now it's the 90s, and this is the best sounding album since Back in Black. It sounds so good in fact that they could release it today and nobody would complain about it sounding dated. Everything is clear and direct and punchy and in your face, the way AC/DC is meant to sound.

And it starts with an absolute bang. Thunderstruck and Fire your Guns are hands down the best songs they've written in a decade. If they don't make you jump out of your seat, nothing will. Things calm down a bit with Moneytalks. The Razors Edge starts slow and then builds up, which I really like, and Rock your Heart out is a great uptempo song, even though the chorus is kind of lackluster. The rest of the songs are okay, though the album loses steam towards the end; Let's make it and If you dare seem kind of forgettable to me. Still, I think this is the best one since Back in Black.

Another lineup change happened here and behind the drums is now Welsh drummer Chris Slade. He's a more versatile drummer than Simon Wright and he must have swallowed a metronome as a child because he plays like a machine with impeccable timing. The result is a rhythm section that's tight as hell, but it's missing a bit of Phil Rudd's laid back swing. I like him a lot in AC/DC though, especially on the 1991 live recording from Castle Donington, where he kicks ass.

Favourite Song

Thunderstruck. Of course. What else?

Ballbreaker (1995)

★★★☆☆

I haven't heard this album in decades. I remember it sounding awful, but it actually sounds fine, no complaints there. But the songs don't do very much for me. Hard as a Rock is fine and became a staple of their live shows. I like The Furor (which I misheard as "Der Führer" in the past - oops), Boogie Man is a bluesy number that's reminiscent of some of the work with Bon Scott, and Ballbreaker is nice and groovy. The rest though seems kind of forgettable to me. Brian also sounds not that great here, kind of hoarse and weak. There's a live recording from the tour after this album called No Bull and he sounds the same there. Out of breath and hoarse. Maybe he was smoking too much during this time, I don't know. But he sounds worse than he did on the previous album and live recording from five years prior.

Phil Rudd is back on the drums here for the first time since the Flick of the Switch album, and he brings the old AC/DC groove back, which is nice. I wonder though how the album would have sounded with Chris Slade still on the drums... maybe he would have given some of the slower songs a bit more of a push. Comparing this album with the last makes me really value his contribution, he gave the band some forward momentum which is missing here.

Favourite Song

Hard as a Rock.

Stiff Upper Lip (2000)

★★★★☆

I think I started listening to AC/DC some time in the late 90s, don't know when exactly. So in my world, everything they released so far has always existed, and this is the first "new" release for me. It came out right around the time I turned 18, when I was into AC/DC big time.

It starts with Stiff Upper Lip, which is an absolute banger of a song. I played it like 50 times in a row when I first heard it. It's right up there with Thunderstruck, Hells Bells and Highway to Hell for me. The rest of the album has more of a bluesy feel, much more than any AC/DC album that came before, and back then I didn't really like that, I wanted every song to be like the title track. Listening back to the album now, I appreciate it a lot more. Songs like Can't Stand Still, Safe in New York City or Satellite Blues might not be the hard rock bangers AC/DC is known for, but they're still great songs in their own right.

The only small issue I have with the album are Brian's vocals. He sounds better here than he did on Ballbreaker, but he sings at the top of his range throughout and that makes him sound squeezed and hard to listen to at times. The bluesy feel of the album could have done with a slightly more relaxed approach to the vocals.

On the tour for this album they played a show in Munich, where they recorded a DVD. Munich is about 1,5hrs from where I grew up, but I was still in school at the time and had no money to buy a ticket and see them; my uncle, who is a massive AC/DC fan, did go. I immediately bought the DVD when it came out, and man did I wish I had been there, because it's a fantastic show!

Favourite Song

Stiff Upper Lip.

Black Ice (2008)

★★★★☆

Eight years since the last album marks the longest gap between AC/DC albums to date, and I remember that throughout the 2000s there was a lot of speculation that the band was going to retire and wouldn't record or tour any longer. Thankfully none of this turned out to be true, and they came out with a banger of an album.

This album feels relaxed to me. The songs are great, and it sounds like the band is having fun playing them. Brian sounds amazing here; he sings in a slightly lower register than he did on previous albums and as a result his voice sound much stronger and freer than it did on Stiff Upper Lip. There are a number of great headbangers on here, especially Rock 'n' Roll Train, Big Jack, War Machine and Wheels, and a couple of bluesy ones in the vein of the last album, too. With 55 minutes it's the longest AC/DC album, and they could have maybe trimmed a song or two off the end, but overall it's a great comeback album and it proved that they weren't done yet.

I finally saw them live on this tour in 2010 in Stuttgart. It was a great show, and there were I think 65.000 people in the audience, which is the biggest crowd I've ever been in. I'm glad I saw them, but I also decided that once is enough. These big stadium shows with tens of thousands of people are just not for me.

Unfortunately this would be the last album with Malcolm Young on guitar, who had to leave the band a few years later due to suffering from dementia. I remember when I saw them live thinking that he seemed to look confused at times. He was already suffering from memory loss at that time, and later on I read that he would often sit down before a show to rehearse the riffs that he wrote and played a million times before, so he would remember them on stage. He died in 2017.

Favourite Song

Big Jack. The chorus is just so catchy!

Rock or Bust (2014)

★★★★☆

Now I'm entering uncharted territory, because I never heard these last two albums in full. By this time my interest in AC/DC had kind of waned; I was and am still following their career, but I no longer run out to the record store to buy their latest album on the day it comes out, which I did with Black Ice. This is the first album without Malcolm, who was replaced by his nephew Stevie Young on rhythm guitar, though apparently all the riffs were still written by Angus and Malcolm, the way it's always been.

How is the album? Well, it's ok. I'm not overly enthusiastic about it, but it's a solid AC/DC record which feels very similar to the previous one. The one song that stood out to me is Rock the Blues Away, which has a great southern rock feel to it. It's unusual for AC/DC, but it's catchy and I like it. The rest of the album flows nicely, but a day after having listened to it, I've already forgotten most of the songs. It's standard AC/DC stuff without any particular ups and downs. Nice album, but it didn't make me jump out of my seat.

Up until this point, AC/DC was always rock solid with its line ups; in fact since 1980 apart from two changes on the drums (followed by Phil Rudd's return) nothing changed at all. Now things are becoming more unstable though. Malcolm had to leave the band to be replaced by Stevie, and shortly before the album's release Phil Rudd was arrested for drug posession and trying to hire an assassin to kill two people. What the hell! So he was out of the band for a while (he briefly returned, then dropped out again for unknown reasons) and was replaced by Chris Slade, who already played on the Razor's Edge album and tour. Cliff Williams announced his retirement at the conclusion of the tour for this album, and Brian had to leave the tour due to trouble with his hearing. He was replaced live by Axl Rose, who did a surprisingly good job singing AC/DC, I have to say. I expected the worst, but he nailed it.

Favourite Song

Rock the Blues Away.

Power Up (2020)

★★★★★

After the recent shakeups in the lineup, it seemed like AC/DC might have been done. But against all odds the stars aligned; Brian got his hearing issues under control, Cliff Williams came out of retirement and even Phil Rudd got his legal troubles cleared up somehow, so the band got together again to record another album. Angus dug through his collection of ideas that he and Malcolm had come up with in the past, so even though Malcolm isn't around anymore, his spirit can still be felt on the album.

And what an album it is. I shouldn't have skipped this one when it came out, because it's great! It pulled me in right from the first song Realize with it's signature AC/DC groove that only they can pull off. Shot in the Dark, which was released as the first single is great, Through the Mists of Time has a nice, slightly melancholic feel to it, Wild Reputation is a typical mid-tempo blues rocker... Everything that makes AC/DC great is there on this album, and I enjoyed every minute of it. If this ends up being their last album, which it probably is, then it's a great conclusion to their career.

Favourite Song

Through the Mists of Time. I especially love the video which takes a look back at their career and pays tribute to the band members who are no longer with us.

Epilogue

So this is it, 17 AC/DC albums. And now I can confidently answer the question I posed at the beginning: Do they all sound the same?

Absolutely not!

They all sound like AC/DC, sure, but each album has it's own character, and you can clearly tell how the band has evolved and changed throughout the more than five decades of their career.

It seems though that the death of Bon Scott had a lasting impact on Malcolm and Angus, because with the exception of Hells Bells, they never again reached that level of raw power that they displayed on their earlier albums. Of course this is pure speculation, maybe the band's trajectory in the 80s would have looked the same with Bon still in the band, who knows.

The band is still touring to this day, but things have changed, starting with the exit of Malcolm due to his health in 2014. By now Cliff Williams has retired, Phil Rudd seems to be out for good (even though nothing was ever announced publicly) and so AC/DC it mostly Angus and Brian now, with Stevie on guitar and two guest musicians (Matt Laug and Chris Chaney) on drums and bass. Angus is 71 and Brian is 78, so who knows how long they'll still be around.

But as long as they're healthy and enjoy what they're doing, I say more power to them, and I'm glad they're still playing and are bringing joy to the people who come out to see them. It will be a sad day when they decide to retire for good, but their albums and live recordings will live on forever, and I'm immensely grateful to them for the countless hours of joy their music has brought me.