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(Atlantic Records) In 1980, the remaining members of Aussie hard-rockers AC/DC faced a near-impossible task in moving forward without their original singer Bon Scott. Scott, who died in February of the same year, was the perfect front-man for the gleefully immature band, a hard-partying madman with a raucous snarl of a singing voice. Without him, the band recruited glam rocker Brian Johnson to lead the new incarnation of AC/DC on their album Back in Black, which opened with a bell tolling on the opening track “Hells Bells.”
It’s astounding to consider the album in such context, when the band is so fully-formed and so confident in the retaining power of their pure rock ‘n roll sound through every moment of the legendary album. “Hells Bells” is a perfect showcase for the album’s legendary sound, founded upon Angus and Malcolm Young’s double-guitar interplay. Between verses and again in the final chorus, they find plenty of time for their demon-spawning solos.
That tolling bell is the perfect ominous announcement to begin a song and an album that sounds as though it could very well split the Earth to reveal an underworld. Brian Johnson is the true revelation here, as he immediately carves his own vocal niche, separate from Scott’s but equally savage in delivery. In this context, his screeching lyrics could be the wails of the tortured souls in the rocking version of Hell AC/DC loves so much.
The song, released as the album’s second single on Halloween (of course), remains one of the purest examples of AC/DC’s sense of raw power and pure fun, expressed through a perfect five-piece band dynamic.
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