140. AC/DC / Blow Up Your Video. 1988. 2.5/5

I really wanted to love this album. Who Made Who had come out previously and re-whetted our appetites for classic AC/DC material, and when this came out, fired up by the two single releases, there was great hope that this would be the return of AC/DC as a megaforce. On first listen, it just didn't grab me at all. But the band was touring Australia for the first time in seven years, and so I gave it spin after spin to force myself to love it. It didn't work. For an album that contains two of the band's most recognisable songs of the 80's on it, this is somewhat of a disappointment.

Of course, you know what you get with AC/DC, but having started the album so well with "Heatseeker" and "That's The Way I Wanna Rock 'N' Roll", the rest is very up and down average fare. Even these two opening songs, with their big videos and massive airplay, are really only standard stuff. Their perceived popularity probably came more from the fact that they heralded that first Australian tour in forever, and this cashed in on that market. They're not bad songs but they aren't from the top shelf either.
From this point on, there are some songs that have merit, and others that you would almost have to categorise as filler, which for a band as revered as AC/DC is a terrible thing to have to say. If you want hard rock songs with a solid rhythmic base that satisfies all of the basic musical elements, topped off with vocals over the top that tend to sing along without a huge influence, and the occasional guitar solo that quite frankly rarely manages to disturb the furniture in its volume or originality, then you can find all of that here. Although it would be slightly unfair to suggest so, the band could almost have recoded the same song here and then repeated it seven times to complete this album. In essence you jump into the pool, and then tread for 44 minutes.

Perhaps I am being overly sensitive to this, but I still remember how disappointed I was with this album back when I bought it, and so much more so after I first saw AC/DC in concert just a couple of weeks later from the front row of the Entertainment Centre in Sydney. the band then was bigger than life, playing all their hits, and showcasing their amazing talent. This album does not possess a whole lot of that excitement.

Rating:  Dig the trench, watch the blast, shell shock come, coming fast.  2.5/5