Nobody comes out unscathed from a loss. So no, this AC / DC drive is not the same as other AC / DC drives. It sounds similar, but it resonates differently. It is impossible to be the same person before and after the death of a brother. And Angus Young lost three in the last three years (George and Malcolm in 2017, Margaret in 2019). How to sound the same? There is no way. How to feel the same? There is no way. How to live the same? There is no way. How to say the same? There is no way.
It is not by chance that after so much death the verses that open Power Up say: "There is a moment when you realize: it is the moments that pass you by that take you to paradise. In its 45-year career, AC / DC had talked a lot about hell but never, ever made any mention of paradise. Until now.
The last time the group had released an album so close to death was in 1980. On February 19 of that year, Bon Scott, its singer, had died; on July 25 of that same year they released Back in Black with Brian Johnson as the new vocalist. White letters on a black background on the cover as a tribute and an opening track that made the "Bells of Hell" ring. Far from paradise, the journey down the highway to hell that had begun in 1979 reached its destination.
More round numbers in the life of a square rock band (as if squaring the circle could be resolved to pure rock and roll of basic riffs). Time passed, more deaths passed, and more life passed. Angus Young, the first emoji guitarist in history, was 25 years old in 1980, today he is 65. He plays the same, but he sounds different. And AC / DC doesn't sing to hell, it sings to paradise.
Already in the pre AC / DC years, he had made his first weapons in the Marcus Hook Roll Band surrounded by his brothers George, Malcolm and Alex. Now, although all the songs are signed by the duo, who performs the rhythms is Stevie Young, his nephew. Angus always knew how to surround himself with the family jewels, even when he was the most precious.
It doesn't sound the same either, Brian Johnson, who had been kicked out of the group and temporarily replaced by Axl Rose (!) In 2016. There are his highs with that swampy vibrato, but let's go to 00:29 on "Rejection" the second track on the album. He can be heard extending the range with an unaffected falsetto that he had never even tried. Right on that topic, that of rejection. He who had been rejected from the group due to incipient deafness. He had to drop everything. And he did. Key verses: " Better keep me on your side, or I will find you at night ", "I miss the rest and I set you on fire ."
Let's go now to "Through the Mists of Time", the least AC / DC song AC / DC has recorded in a long time. Angus's childish guitar that falls as if on the heels of the kick drum and the beginning of the melody reminiscent of ... "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John? And while the group plays with nuances and intensities like a pub band, Brian Johnson talks about the passage of time and people: " Look at the dark shadows on the wall / Look at the pictures / Some hang, others fall ". AC / DC with nostalgia. Never. Before. Listened.
Power Up, of course, has the choruses it has to have ("Shot in the Dark", "Kick You When You're Down"). It has the riff + silence sets you need to have ("Demon Fire" and "Code Red"). He has the solos he has to have ("Realize" is pure claw). It has the fillings that it has to have? ("Witch's Spell", "Money Shot)". Power Up is AC / DC's seventeenth studio album and has a lot of the same stuff that AC / DC records have. But it has a relationship with time and death that the rest do not.
On November 28, 2017, Angus approached the hearse that was taking his brother and friend forever, he left the guitar next to him to be buried with it, in a place that only the family knows. A few minutes earlier, he had befriended Phil Rudd and invited him back to the band. This is how Power Up began to cook : at a funeral that showed them nothing but certainty that for them, death is no longer surrounded by the glamor of excesses but by the inexorableness of old age. The question about whether rock has died never existed for AC / DC, what exists from this album is the confirmation that for AC / DC there is rock after death. And paradise now presents itself as a possible place to follow her.
