Disco de AC/DC: “The Razor's Edge [Remaster]”

The Razor's Edge might be the best AC/DC album since Back in Black. For Those About To Rock, Flick of the Switch, Fly on the Wall, and Blow up your Video were great but AC/DC hadn't put out a truly classic rock album in almost a decade. Thunderstruck and Moneytalks are two of their best songs and Are You Ready, Got You By the Balls, and Rock Your Heart Out are great too. Brian sounds better than usual and Angus opening solo for Thunderstruck is possibly one of the best openers ever. This is a cd that more than AC/DC fans will love and I hope it gets the credit it deserves.

This album was what AC/DC needed after a series of relatively mediocre albums. (for AC/DC that is, those are still better than 99% of recorded music) The album opens with the blistering Thunderstruck, which is already a staple of many aspiring rock guitar players. The record follows this with a bevy of hard rockers, Fire Your Guns, Moneytalks, Rock Your Heart Out, Are you Ready, and If You Dare, all of which bring back memories of the High Voltage and Highway to Hell albums. The tracks not mentioned above still dish out plenty of good-old rock 'n' roll, they're just not quite a memorable. The only track that leaves one wanting would be the absurd Mistress for Christmas, and if you take it as a joke (which I assume it is) even it's not too bad.

After the magnificent peak of "Back In Black", it seemed that AC/DC had spent their muse. Their creative slump through the 80s came to an end, though, as they delivered this superb gem in September 1990.

"The Razors Edge" was a sizable hit, although not as big as it deserved, and it is filled with the kind of memorable, catchy and unapologetically silly rock n' roll that made "Black In Black" such a tremendous album.

From the menacing title song through the melodious (and surprisingly big) hit singles "Thunderstruck", "Are You Ready" and "Moneytalks", to the silly "Mistress For Christmas", this record doesn't have a single weak track. Even the lesser-known album tracks, such as "Shot Of Love", "If You Dare" and "Let's Make It" are more than worth a listen, and rarely has any rock band put together such a great collection of songs...tune for tune, riff for riff, this is better than most hard rock bands' greatest hits-collections.

The title, by the way, is a quote from a 1988 interview with Keith Richards.

Nice.

after reading the reviews, I guess I'm in the minority when I say that The Razors Edge is probably the AC/DC album I'm least likely to listen to. Yes, there are some great tracks on here, most notably "Thunderstruck", but "Rock Your Heart Out", "Got You By The Balls", and "Shot of Love" (nearly reminiscent of a High Voltage-era riff) get your feet tappin' as well. So I don't have any major gripes about the songwriting, for the most part. My main problem, however, is Bruce Fairburn's production...it's SO crisp and clean, it nearly chokes the groove out of many songs. With most AC/DC albums (particularily with Phil Rudd on drums), the rhythm section moves along like a freight train to where you can practically hear the "chug-a-lugg" noise coming from the tracks. On this album, I dunno...I can't put my finger on it, but it almost sounds like the band's playing along to a metronome, it's that precise. Even when Mutt Lange (AC/DC's "other" mainstream producer) was at the controls, he still managed to keep things raw & swingin'. Fairburn, on the other hand...well, put it this way: if there was an audio equivalent for a "new car" smell, you can bet Fairburn's patented the formula. Which, by the way, doesn't bode well when you're AC/DC IMO. Nonetheless, often the band still rocks in spite of the slick production, and The Razors Edge might actually be an ideal start for a newbie...y'know, as a way to ease 'em in slowly...lol

It's like this, I watched the Stones' DVD from Toronto '03 and after sitting through all that lukewarm nonsense Angus Young's opening "Thunderstruck" riff was like a hot knife through butter and I was reminded, once again, just how damn much fun AC/DC is. Alas they have no recorded compilation of their stuff so I made my own, and no AC/DC compilation would be complete w/o "Thunderstruck" or "Money Talks".