Rifftastic return to form

AC/DC are back with an album rammed full of romantic ballads and gentle lullabies. I’m kidding, of course.

Power Up is exactly what you expect and exactly what you want from Australia’s greatest export – 12 tracks of titanium-tough roughneck rock with blistering lead breaks and rousing choruses.

It’s dedicated to the band’s co-founder, rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, whose tragic 2017 death from dementia was just one in a series of setbacks that would have sunk a lesser combo.

Geordie singer Brian Johnson quit to save his hearing, drummer Phil Rudd was busted for drugs and placed in home d detention, and b bassist Cliff Williams retir r retired. But all three are back for P Power Up.

The new single, Shot In T The Dark, sets the tone perfectly for AC/DC’S first album since

2014’s Rock Or Bust, powering in with a glorious riff and undisguised glee.

Other hellishly good tracks include the upbeat and infectious Demon Fire, with a wiry riff that grips like razor wire, and the opener, Realize, which sets the scene for the mayhem to come. It’s AC/DC doing what they do best.

All the songs are credited to

Malcolm and Angus Young, the Glasgow-born brothers who formed the band in Sydney in 1973 and drove it to the heights of stadium rock success.

While cynics sneered,

AC/DC stuck to their mix of granite-hard riffing, pounding rhythms and risqué lyrics, influencing Ice Cube, Beastie Boys, and The Sugarhill Gang along the way. They stormed into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2003.

Today, the winning formula remains intact.

AC/DC are not ones for experimentation. As Malcolm once said, “The Beatles and Stones started as rock ’n’ roll bands, branched out and then went back to rock… so why leave in the first place?

“Why not simply work better and harder at what you’ve got?”