Band:	AC/DC
Album:	Fly On The Wall
Style:	Hard rock, Blues rock
Release date:	June 1985
Guest review by:	omne metallum

01. Fly On The Wall
02. Shake Your Foundations
03. First Blood
04. Danger
05. Sink The Pink
06. Playing With Girls
07. Stand Up
08. Hell Or High Water
09. Back In Business
10. Send For The Man

Every band has their low ebb, and for AC/DC, that (dis)honour falls on 1985's Fly On The Wall. It is surprising how far AC/DC could sink but sink they did; drowning in awful production and poor quality songs, Fly On The Wall hit lows that thankfully the band would not hit again.

To address the biggest and most evident problem on the album first, the production on Fly On The Wall is simply crap. The amount of echo and reverb the songs have plastered to them just ruin the charm that AC/DC songs have. AC/DC are a riff-driven band; name any classic track and you will remember the song's riff. While Let There Be Rock was an unconcise distorted album, it worked because it was the sheer unhinged volume that shook the music and consequently the listener that gave it a raw charm. For Fly On The Wall this unconcise sound is a result of overproduction that makes the sound murky and does not allow you to clearly hear the music properly.

At least one small mercy is that the production only ruins what are mostly subpar tracks rather than actual classics, with the album sounding like rejects from the past few years thrown together on one release. While "Danger" is a nice nod to the blues roots of the band, my God is it boring. Sitting alongside songs like "Stand Up" and "First Blood", rock bottom only seems to get deeper. Don't believe me? Check out the chorus to "Shake Your Foundations"; if the "Aie aie oh" doesn't work for you the first time, don't worry, you'll have plenty more chances for it to work its charm!

There are only two songs on Fly On The Wall that I would say are diamonds in the rough and deserve to be pulled out of the obscurity this album has faded into. "Playing With Girls" is an AC/DC classic through and through; it is the only song that seems to have much effort put into it and is probably the best song by the band from '83 until The Razor's Edge in '90. "Send For The Man", while not as good as "Playing With Girls", is still enjoyable and will have you tapping your feet along to its 4/4 rhythm.

It is AC/DC, it goes without saying that the band can handle their instruments well; it's just a shame they don't do much with that talent here. Fly On The Wall is the first album with Johnson to see his strong voice of before break; sure, it's not as good as before, but it has its charm that endears itself to you. It's just on this album the band haven't yet found out a way to compensate for this; as a result, while he isn't bad, he doesn't have the tools to pull up the nosedive. The rest of the band are competent but unremarkable for much of the album, with "Playing With Girls" the only track that the Young brothers excel themselves.

There is a reason the band have largely disowned this album, there are only really two songs worth salvaging from it. I would only listen to this album if you are an AC/DC fan through and through; if you're anything less, then you will be delving into the scrap pile while neglecting the raft of solid gold classics on other albums.