UMUR
"Black Ice" is the 15th full-length studio album by Australian hard/heavy rock act AC/DC. The album was released through Columbia Records in October 2008. It´s AC/DC´s first album since "Stiff Upper Lip (2000)". The 8 years gap between albums was due to a label shift from Atlantic Records to Sony Music and then a shift within Sony Music from Epic Records to Columbia Records. In addition to all the label fuzz, bassist Cliff Williams suffered an injury to his hand in 2005, and spent 18 months unable to play. So while the band took a break between 2001 and 2003 before resuming band activities again, they didn´t spend 8 years doing nothing. The two Young brothers did however have a lot of time to write and tweak their new written tracks, and by the time AC/DC entered the studio in March 2008 with producer Brendan O'Brien, they were ready to rock.
Commercially "Black Ice" was a very big success and by December 2008 the album had sold around 6 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best selling AC/DC albums, along side classic albums by the band such as "Highway to Hell (1979)" and "Back in Black (1980)".
The album features the usual hard rocking and blues based heavy rock style with Brian Johnson´s rusty voice in front. The band genereally seem a bit more inspired than on the somewhat forgettable "Stiff Upper Lip (2000)", which is a nice surprise. But while there are several strong rockers on the album like "Rock 'n' Roll Train", "Skies on Fire", "Big Jack", "War Machine" and the closing title track, "Black Ice" unfortunately also features some of the same fatique that characterized it´s predecessor. The fact that the album features 15 tracks distributed over a 55:37 minutes of playing time (making "Black Ice" the longest running studio album by AC/DC up until then) doesn´t help either. "Black Ice" is simply too long and features too many filler tracks to be a truly excellent album. But less will do because overall it´s still a much stronger and more memorable album than "Stiff Upper Lip (2000)" and the strongest tracks on the album fully display why AC/DC are counted among the elite hard/heavy rock acts in the world.
The organic powerful sound production provides the music with just the right authenticity and punch. So while "Black Ice" isn´t exactly a revelation and to my ears not one of the better albums by AC/DC, it´s still a pretty great album deserving a 3.5 star (70%) rating.