![Live (2CD) [Remastered] on CD by AC/DC](https://d3fa68hw0m2vcc.cloudfront.net/aa0/108064.jpeg "Live (2CD) [Remastered] on CD by AC/DC")
HIGH VOLTAGE was the first chance America had to glimpse the raw power of
Australia's best hard rock outfit. From their earliest days, lead guitarist
Angus Young, a spastic dwarf-like riff-monger who wore nothing but traditional
schoolboy attire, led this band of hooligans with gleeful perversity and
balls-out ambition. The group's intent is perfectly clear from the
disc's opening power chords: to distill rock and mutate the blues down to its
barest essentials in a pulverizing whomp. Riding over the top of the battering
rhythm section is the all-too-true sneer of vocalist Bon Scott, who brings
sexist anthems to a previously unachieved high (or low, depending on your
reference point).
With over-the-top show-stoppers about gonorrhea (“The Jack”), HIGH VOLTAGE
is not for the faint of heart. The single from this record, “T.N.T,” got
AC/DC into rock radio rotation and gave metal fans a template of the brand of
molten lava the band would later weld into perfection. The formula for which the
group would eventually become famous–songs based around three crunching power
chords and the high-pitched squeal of a man who sounds like he's just been
unleashed from the reformatory–is firmly established here.
