AIRBOURNE: No Guts. No Glory.

Produced by Johnny K

Released: March 8

AC/DC soundalike bands are a dime a dozen and I've lost count of the number of CDs by such bands that have littered my desk over the years. Few if any have ever had much appeal beyond novelty value, particularly if -- as it usually the case -- their only notable aspect is that they sound like AC/DC. Airbourne is different. There are few bands in recent memory who have copied another band as well as these guys do and yet made it work so well, because as much as they do sound like their idols, they have a vibrant, youthful energy coupled with an aggression in their playing that AC/DC has lacked since Bon Scott was alive.

Airbourne has nailed the classic AC/DC sound right down to Malcolm Young's guitar tone, but unlike bands like Rhino Bucket and Krokus who also plundered the Youngs' riff arsenal mercilessly, these Aussie lads also know how to write a bunch of catchy songs that manage to stay in your head once the album is over. They may not yet be able to quite fill an entire album with them, but they certainly have some good ones. The opening four tracks of No Guts. No Glory. are prime slices of mid-70s Aussie hard rock, buffed, polished, re-booted and re-energised into early 21st Century mode. It's fist-pumpin', headbangin', chorus-shoutin', heavy rockin' goodness from the first moment and continues rocking until well into the playlist with gutsy, earthy blue-collar rock n' roll that is at least as good and often even better than anything AC/DC has done in almost two decades. Joel O'Keefe's sneering wail has enough of the sound and power of his heroes to be authentic but retains a character of its own, although as the album ploughs on, he does begin to sound more and more like Brian Johnson.

Where the album falls down is in its length. At 47 minutes, No Guts. No Glory. is way too long for an album of heavy-as-shit rock n roll and after about track eight, the songs really start to take on a sameness that makes it drag out. "Chewin' the Fat" and "Get Busy Livin'" sound remarkably alike, with a build to the chorus that got me thinking of "What Do You Do For Money, Honey?", and "Armed and Dangerous" was almost the same, with "Shoot to Thrill" chucked in to boot. The raucous drinking anthem "Back on the Bottle" lifts it again in time to finish though, unless you decide on the Special Edition, which wears out the welcome even more by including another five tracks that simply aren't as good: "Kickin' it Old School" is a total waste of two and a half minutes. Still, this is the best album of pure high voltage rock n' roll since the last Airbourne album, and that includes Black Ice.

No Guts. No Glory. No frills. Just rock. Crank it!

1. Born to Kill
2. No Way but the Hard Way
3. Blonde, Bad and Beautiful
4. Raise the Flag
5. Bottom of the Well
6. White Line Fever
7. It Ain't Over 'till It's Over
8. Steel Town
9. Chewin' the Fat
10. Get Busy Livin'
11. Armed and Dangerous
12. Overdrive
13. Back on the Bottle

Special Edition tracks:

1. Loaded Gun
2. My Dynamite Will Blow You Sky High (and Get Ya Moanin' After Midnight)
3. Rattle Your Bones
4. Kickin' it Old School
5. Devil Child

Rating: 80%

ARMORED SAINT: La Raza

Produced by Joey Vera
Released: Today

If you caught their shows last year or you've heard any of their albums, you'd already know that Armored Saint is one of the most under-rated bands in metal history, and here's proof. They may have only made three albums in the last 19 years, but they aren't the least bit rusty. Every time these five dudes get together, they make it sound like they've never been apart, and despite Joey Vera's assertion that he really wasn't interested in trying to take up where Revelation left off in 2000, it's clear almost immediately that La Raza is an Armored Saint album.

"Loose Cannon" comes in on a slow build from acoustics then breaks out into their trademark style of rocking heavy metal. It's a solid beginning, but Armored Saint is just warming up, unleashing a classic twin guitar harmony in the intro to "Head On" before heading into a chunky riff and then a big catchy groove. "Left Hook from Right Field" and "Get Off the Fence" are as equally littered with hooks and rock-style grooves, with Jeff Duncan and Phil Sandoval busting out some guitar pyrotechnics in the latter.

Displaying the diversity they've long been known for, the title track opens with a distinctive Latin rock vibe recalling Gonzo's percussive work on "Tribal Dance". "La Raza" is a heavy, bluesy jam, easily the stand out of the album and one of the band's best tracks ever, which is saying a lot. Other songs work in the ethnic and blues-flavoured influences also while remaining solidly in heavy metal territory. The closer even throws in a funky edge to heightened the almost danceability factor of the whole album.

La Raza is an extremely catchy album, with John Bush, having penned some of his best lyrics, in fine voice as always. Like Overkill, Armored Saint rarely if ever disappoint, and as there doesn't appear to be any plans for the band to play live beyond a couple of dates in LA, La Raza may be your final chance to enjoy one of the best metal bands of all.

1. Loose Cannon
2. Head On
3. Left Hook from Right Field
4. Get Off the Fence
5. Chill
6. La Raza
7. Black Feet
8. Little Monkey
9. Blues
10. Bandit Country

Rating: 90%

UNLEASHED: As Yggdrasil Trembles

Produced by Frederik Folkare

Released: Today

These days, the definition of death metal seems to change every few months as elements are added, subtracted, ramped up or diluted. Even for an experienced chronicler it gets difficult to delineate where death metal ends and something else begins: is it hardcore, deathcore, metalcore, death metal hardcore, pretentious jazz-metal noodling bullshit with death vox?

Sweden's old-schoolers Unleashed shine like a beacon in the murk of cross-genre pollution, cutting through the smog like a scythe. Because Unleashed plays death metal the old way, and they've never done anything else. These guys have been doing this so well for so long, you get the feeling they could knock their tunes together as they sleep. But music as simple and unadorned as this is the hardest to create, because it takes enormous discipline to keep to the same path with so many diversions. No band exists in a vaccuum, and it's not as if the guys in Unleashed haven't played in other bands that are different, but when they get together in this formation they just do Unleashed, as if there's no other band in existence.

So it is then that As Yggdrasil Trembles continues the proud tradition of no-frills, groove-laden death metal. As always, they are almost subtle as far as death metal goes: no over-the-top speed or expansive technical parts, almost restrained drumming that does what it needs to and little else, listenable vocals. And, as always, they have made a consistently strong album of rousing, catchy metal songs, the kind that call to mind raging fires surrounded by bearded men swinging huge jugs of mead as they toast some ancient victory or prepare to obliterate some weaker foe. Whenever Johnny Hedlund isn't singing directly about Norse mythology -- as he does in "Chief Einherjar", the title track, and others -- he's singing about combat: "Return Fire", "This Time We Fight", and the band constantly drives the music as if caught in the midst of battle.

But what am I going on and on for? If you're familiar with Unleashed, you'll know what to expect from As Yggdrasil Trembles. If you're not, then chuck it on and hear what death metal sounds like without all the bullshit. Either way, you can't go wrong.

1. Courage Today, Victory Tomorrow!
2. So it Begins
3. As Yggdrasil Trembles
4. Wir Kapitulieren Neimals
5. This Time We Fight
6. Master of the Ancient Art
7. Chief Einherjar
8. Return Fire
9. Far Beyond Hell
10. Dead to Me
11. Yahweh and the Chosen Ones
12. Cannibalistic Epidemic Continues

Rating: 85%

WHY AC/DC MATTERS

by Anthony Bozza

As a life-long AC/DC fan, former Rolling Stone journalist Anthony Bozza ponders why it took until the mega-selling Black Ice album for the band to begin to get some of the real critical success he thinks they've long deserved. His argument is a strong one, and in this book he dissects AC/DC's music into its constituent parts as if examining the workings of a car or the valves of the human heart. By doing this, and doing it with humour and an engaging spark to his writing, Bozza is somehow able to stretch what would ordinarily be a feature article into a 160-page book that even the doubters his argument is aimed at would enjoy.

Why AC/DC Matters is a good read, carefully examining the way a band has been able to use little more than five open chords to write close to 200 songs and sell more albums than everyone except The Beatles. Bozza's analysis is meticulous as he considers Malcolm Young's style of play and speaks with college professors about the vocal abilities of Brian Johnson and Bon Scott. It's a strange intellectualisation of a band that -- rightly or wrongly -- is widely considered by critics as an antithesis of intellectualism. Yet herein lies Bozza's point: for a band to have made such simple music so successful for so long actually requires real genius.

While he does make this point, and few readers could come away from it disagreeing with him, it's hard to see exactly who this book is aimed at. As a biography it's irrelevant in the wake of Murray Engleheart's colossal Maximum Rock n Roll and it really doesn't offer anything new to either fans or non-fans. AC/DC, he writes, have made the same music for almost 40 years. This is a fact everyone knows. Their music is simple, but lots of people like it. Everyone knows this too. And as a lot of people also know, outside the metal and guitar mags, music critics have never much liked them. Nothing Bozza writes about AC/DC is anything I didn't already know; it's almost as if he wrote this just to please himself and his agent sold it on knowing that people would buy it because it's about the second-highest selling band in history. Even so, unlike I did with Stephen Davis' Guns N' Roses debacle, I didn't feel gyped by Why AC/DC Matters. It might be ultimately rather pointless, but it is good fun.