Band:	AC/DC
Album:	For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
Style:	Hard rock, Blues rock
Release date:	November 1981
Guest review by:	omne metallum

01. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)
02. Put The Finger On You
03. Let's Get It Up
04. Inject The Venom
05. Snowballed
06. Evil Walks
07. C.O.D.
08. Breaking The Rules
09. Night Of The Long Knives
10. Spellbound

How do you follow up one of the best-selling albums in the history of music? A question that plagues only but a few bands across the breadth of music as a whole, let alone the rock genre. AC/DC also faced a second problem that even fewer bands face; how do you follow up the album that carried the momentum of Highway To Hell and take it even higher? Big shoes to fill for sure. The band decided to answer that question with For Those About To Rock (We Salute You). A strong album that shines bright even with the large looming shadows the prior two albums cast.

Disregarding what came before it, For Those About To Rock is a good album with plenty to merit it. Offering up solid rock tracks that will get you bopping along and trying to imitate that unique Johnson voice, the album is no slouch. The fact the album gets halfway before hitting a speedbump is evidence that this can stand up on its own (though it is a double-edged sword).

The leviathan title track with its call to arms starts the record off with a bang, leading into my personal favourite "I Put The Finger On You", a straight up rocker with a great gang chanted chorus. "Let's Get It Up" wouldn't have sounded out of place on any of their earlier albums, such is its quality; add into the mix "C.O.D." and "Night Of The Long Knives" and you get songs that rightly match the classics the band had released prior.

The band are on top form; Johnson's voice is still at full power and booms atop of the guitar duo of the Young brothers, who offer up some of the best work of their careers. Tracks like the title track and "Let's Get It Up" are made by their stellar teamwork. Williams and Rudd form the backbone of the record, finding a niche that allows the record to sound grounded while the rest of the band go off and do their thing.

Alas, trying to raise the bar a third time in succession after Back In Black and Highway To Hell, which both set the standards for the rock genre astronomically high, was a touch too much. Songs like "Snowballed", "Evil Walks" and "Breaking The Rules" aren't bad, but they don't help the album reach the heights prior records had. They serve as breaks between the classics on the album rather than being classics themselves; worthy of a listen for sure, but they are not tracks I would actively seek out.

The other side of the two edged sword? Much of the best songs are on the first half of the album; with the exemption of "C.O.D." and "Night Of The Long Knives", the second half contains the aforementioned "Snowballed" etc that see the band lose steam and feel like a decline from the peak that was the start of the record.

For many, For Those About To Rock marks the start of the band losing their way for the rest of the decade until The Razor's Edge put them back on course. This album deserves better than merely being the middle child between the great albums that preceded it and the mixed bag that followed it; For Those About To Rock stands tall even if you are busy glancing over it, spellbound by what is around it.