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@SPCmovienight @mangeurdenuage Black Ice is one of those "perfectly delightfully mid" AC/DC albums from the post-throat surgery era, more specifically AFTER Razor's Edge which I feel is kind of AC/DC's final peak. All their albums after that are good, but never AS good.

What this also means is that there are like three really good or great songs on the album, and the rest are just fine or okay. There's never been a truly bad AC/DC song, from any album, from any era (except MAYBE "Little Lover" from the Bon era but I think that would be it and at least that song knew how sleazy it was, in which it's about a clearly underage thotticus fan).

Black Ice was basically their only 2000s era album, following Stiff Upper Lip which came out in 2000, basically ending their 90s era. Black Ice is basically Stiff Upper Lip 2, where the songs are practically interchangeable with that album, which is also somewhat similar to Ballbreaker before that. Apparently, the last album Brian wrote lyrics for was either Fly on the Wall or Razor's Edge, I don't know if that's true but it sounds like it would be.

Half the songs on this album have the word "rock" in the title, and the other half of the songs have the word "rock" in the chorus. This is AC/DC just leaning into the admission that all their albums are supposed to sound the same. I do think this album is better than Stiff Upper Lip, but I also think Power Up, their last album (maybe ever) is actually their best album since Razor's Edge.

The first song is excellent, although confusingly it's called "Rock n Roll Train" which is not what the lyrics are in the chorus or anywhere else in the song. Still, it's one of those "let's put one of the best songs right up front" decisions and it's good. "Skies on Fire" is a pretty straightforward song, this is "okay" for AC/DC. Then "Big Jack" which is a strong one, actually really good. "Anything Goes" is next and this is another "perfectly fine acceptable" song. "War Machine" might actually be the best song on the album, also theorized that they wrote it specifically because of the Iron Man movies. "Smash n Grab" might actually be my favorite though, really strong riff in this. "Spoilin' For a Fight" is actually a pretty strong entry in the "average AC/DC" song category. "Wheels" is a nice average up tempo one. They tend to go up tempo and then a little slower, so "Decibel" is a little slower, although the next song "Stormy May Day" is actually even lower tempo, kind of a mood song that actually stands out as slightly unusual for AC/DC, which is a big benefit to the album because it needed a little changeup, especially around this part of the album, and I think that's also calculated, because track structure on albums is something that's been meticulously picked apart by record companies and "hit makers" for decades even before AC/DC was ever a band. Next is "She Likes Rock n Roll" which is one of the most mid songs on the album, possibly the worst song, but like I said none of these are bad enough to be truly bad or unlistenable, but it might be one of the most skippable songs on this album or even by AC/DC in general. Then there's "Money Made" not to be confused with "Moneytalks" from Razor's Edge, but this song is actually pretty decent and catchy, almost borderline poppy for AC/DC, and it's also known as the chocobo song because it sounds like Brian is saying WARK WARK in the chorus. "Rock n Roll Dream" is actually a really interesting sort of heavy melodic type of song, but for AC/DC, which doesn't really mean "melodic," it means "melodic for AC/DC." Power Up had a couple songs like this too, and it almost feels borderline experimental, as Jay Bauman would say. However, because the sound to it is unique to the other songs on the album, it stands out a lot more and becomes more interesting, which practically defaults to "better" for a band like AC/DC. Then there's "Rockin All the Way" which is another perfectly mid AC/DC song. The album ends with "Black Ice" which is a great closer for the album, an almost dark sinister badass type of song.

I had to hold some incredible restraint to not refer to any of these songs as "rockers" because all of them qualify as that, and it would sound like that one reality show from the 2000s that was trying to replace the lead singer of INXS, where the announcer chick referred to ever single contestant as "rockers" every single time like 20 times per episode.

If I were going to apply some arbitrary number rating to this album, out of all the other AC/DC albums, I'd give this a 5 out of 10.