High Voltage

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 anthems to a previously unachieved high.