After eight albums in as many years (High Voltage through For Those About To Rock We Salute You), AC/DC slowed down. It took two years for Flick Of The Switch to arrive, and two more passed between that one and Fly On The Wall. Writing three new songs for 1986’s Who Made Who must have really taken it out of them, though, because their next full-length didn’t arrive until 1988 — almost three full years after Fly On The Wall.

Blow Up Your Video, despite sporting easily the band’s worst, most nonsensical album title, is actually pretty good. It marked a reunion with their 1970s producers, Harry Vanda and George Young (Malcolm and Angus’s big brother), and a return to their bluesy, hard-boogieing sound. The first thing you hear is guitar: Malcolm and Angus softly picking at a riff. Then Simon Wright shouts a count-off from the back of the room, and the first single, “Heatseeker,” launches into life. Immediately, you can tell that it’s a cleaner, more live-sounding album than its deliberately ugly predecessor. Brian Johnson is in terrific voice, singing more intelligibly — and subtly — than he’s done in years; instead of the one-note, painful shrieking of previous records, he’s enunciating and modulating his tone, making the screams actually mean something. (The lyrics, on the other hand, continue to mean nothing.)

Unfortunately, Blow Up Your Video is a very front-loaded album. “Heatseeker” is a great opener, and “That’s The Way I Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll” is a solid, hard-driving follow-up (which is why it was the second single). There’s an element of funk to the next two tracks, “Meanstreak” and “Go Zone,” keeping the listener’s head nodding if not banging. But starting with “Kissin’ Dynamite,” the last song on the album’s first side, energy and inspiration start to seep away, and it’s all downhill from there. The first three songs on Side Two — “Nick Of Time,” “Some Sin For Nuthin’,” and “Ruff Stuff” — are fast enough, but there’s nothing memorable about the riffs the Young brothers are playing, and the songs fade from memory as soon as they’re over. Things really bog down with “Two’s Up,” which is not only the slowest song on the album but at least a minute too long at 5:20. The band tries to take things out on a high note with “This Means War,” an aggressive rocker played at an almost “Riff Raff” speed, and only miss the mark because of their decision to stop dead on the choruses.

Blow Up Your Video marked something of a rarity for AC/DC, in that its two singles included non-album B-sides. “Snake Eye,” the B-side of “Heatseeker,” is a heavy, stomping track, significantly more aggressive than anything on the album. “Borrowed Time,” the B-side of “That’s The Way I Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll,” fits a little better with the mood of the record, but it still would have jumped the energy level up significantly.