UMUR "Stiff Upper Lip" is the 14th full-length studio album by Australian hard/heavy rock act AC/DC. The album was released through Albert/EastWest Records in February 2000. It´s AC/DC´s first album since "Ballbreaker (1995)", which means a 5 year recording break between the two albums. "Stiff Upper Lip" fared pretty well commercially and has today sold more than 1 million copies.

The music on the album is the usual blues based hard/heavy rock with Brian Johnson´s rusty voice in front. The tracks are generally of a decent quality, but I wouldn´t call it the band´s most inspired release. Actually far from, but there are still a couple of noteworthy tracks on the album. Especially the title track gets positive points in my book. Most tracks are unfortunately not as memorable and some even come off as "run of the mill" type material. The compressed, and for AC/DC´s standards, polished sound production doesn´t help on my impression of the album either. The fact that the album was produced by George Young (the brother of guitarists Angus and Malcolm and producer on most seventies releases by the band) is a bit puzzling to me, as this doesn´t sound anything like the seventies releases by the band.

It´s safe to say that "Stiff Upper Lip" hasn´t left the positive impression on me that I had hoped for, but despite this being perhaps the least interesting AC/DC of the lot, a 3 star (60%) rating is still deserved and it speaks volumes of the usually high standards of the band, that one of their least interesting releases can score this high.

Time Signature House of rock...

Genre: Hard rock / boogie rock

AC/DC having returned to the bluesy boogie rock, "Stiff Upper Lip" pretty much continues where "Ballbreaker" ended with its hard rock songs which are based on solid bluesy boogie riffing and has less metal appeal than the AC/DC of the 80s. It has more or less the same crisp sound as the previous album which suits the bluesy music very well.

Notable tracks are the old school boogie rocker "Meltdown", the sneaky not-very-jazzy "House of Jazz", "Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll" which has a very nice Young and Young style verse riff, which also applies to "Satellite Blues" (which also offers a more interesting bassline than usual (by AC/DC standards)) and the sleazy "Come and Get It".

However, there are some tracks that don't work too well for me: "Hold Me Back" lacks a lot of bottom, althought it's based on some interesting plucking riffs and the similarly thin "Can't Hold Me Back".

At the end of the day, "Stiff Upper Lip" is a solid hard rock album which should appeal to guitar rock fans, hard rock fans, blues rock, and traditional heavy metal fans alike.