Despite their reluctance to issue any sort of \u201cgreatest hits\u201d package officially, I have to break this news to AC\/DC: You already have. Repeatedly.<\/p>\n
Granted, it\u2019s easier to try and catch a jumbo jet barehanded than distill Angus Young and crew\u2019s legacy into one or even two discs, and you would never have complete agreement among AC\/DC fans. But some could argue that the band did this when they last stepped into the area of movie soundtracks with Who Made Who<\/i>, the companion piece to the craptacular movie Maximum Overdrive<\/i>. You could argue that AC\/DC Live<\/i> was a version of a best-of release, as were the Family Jewels<\/i> DVDs.<\/p>\n
Now, presented less than two years after Black Ice<\/i> was released, AC\/DC again find themselves as the soundtrack to a movie \u2013 the film in question this time being Iron Man 2<\/i>. And, if this were viewed as a best-of collection, I\u2019d have to say\u2026they could have done worse. In fact, this proves to be an enjoyable, if not groundbreaking, collection.<\/p>\n
Unlike Who Made Who<\/i>, this disc maintains a nice balance between the Bon Scott and the Brian Johnson eras, and literally covers the group from beginning to \u2013 well, the present day (with \u201cWar Machine\u201d from Black Ice<\/i> being featured on this collection). There is also no duplication of songs on the two soundtracks, though with no new material being included on this set, it\u2019s fairly safe to say that any AC\/DC fan worth their weight in salt probably has all of these tracks.<\/p>\n
Surprise number one is the inclusion of \u201cCold Hearted Man,\u201d a track which just made its US debut a few months ago as part of the Backtracks<\/i> collection (but had been available outside the States since 1978). Surprise number two is that \u201cGuns For Hire\u201d is included; Flick Of The Switch<\/i> is not one of AC\/DC\u2019s albums that is held by many in high regard.<\/p>\n
The fact is, with the exception of \u201cCold Hearted Man,\u201d the chances are excellent that the typical AC\/DC fan has already purchased multiple versions of these tracks. (The fact that three songs are pulled from Back In Black<\/i> speaks volumes.) And while the band would hesitate to call any release a \u201cbest-of\u201d for fear that such a release marks the end of their career, the plain truth is that, while this is hardly a greatest-hits disc, it is a nice primer for the next generation who might not have discovered their older brother\u2019s well-worn AC\/DC records or CDs.<\/p>\n
That isn\u2019t to say that this collection is bad \u2013 in fact, quite the opposite is true. There is not a single moment where the energy lags on Iron Man 2<\/i> \u2013 though I would have questioned if \u201cEvil Walks\u201d was the best selection to pull from For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)<\/i>, or if the title track from The Razor\u2019s Edge<\/i> was an optimal selection. On the other hand, I always welcome a chance to crank the Scott-era version of \u201cLet There Be Rock\u201d at full volume, and I like that \u201cHell Ain\u2019t A Bad Place To Be\u201d also is given the attention that I believe is well overdue. (Yes, I know it\u2019s a live staple\u2026but the original version, as creaky as it was, just kicks serious ass. So there.)<\/p>\n
There is only one thing that could have made this collection better (aside from putting at least one<\/i><\/b> goddamn photo of Scarlett Johansson in the booklet of the deluxe version) \u2013 namely, some type of bone should have been thrown to the long-time, drooling AC\/DC fan to make them want to spend another $20 on a collection of songs they already have. But, in the age of the Internet, and coming off the vault-raiding collection of Backtracks<\/i> \u2013 what could<\/i> they have included? To be honest, I dunno\u2026and I have to concede that the selection of these 15 tracks could have been the work of the filmmakers, so including nuggets even rarer than \u201cCold Hearted Man\u201d might have been an impossibility in this regard.<\/p>\n
(The deluxe version of Iron Man 2<\/i> comes with a DVD that, in all fairness, does include a few new things, such as the promo video for \u201cShoot To Thrill\u201d and the making-of documentary, as well as a version of \u201cHighway To Hell\u201d shot last year in Does it break new ground? No. Does it rehash tracks you have bought numerous times? Yes. Does it still rock? Hell, yes. Who knows how much longer we\u2019re going to have AC\/DC around as a working band, so Iron Man 2<\/i> is a nice reminder of why we should appreciate them while we still can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5683],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41965","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ac-dc","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41965"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41965"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}