Fly On The Wall is the noisiest, nastiest-sounding AC/DC album. Like its predecessor, 1983’s Flick Of The Switch, it was produced by the Young brothers, recorded in Montreux, Switzerland between November 1984 and February 1985. But where Flick had a thick, meaty roar to the guitars, rumbling bass, and cleanly mixed, pounding drums, Fly is much more blown-out sounding. The guitars have a harsh, shearing-metal sound, and the drums are pushed through that ’80s gate that makes the snare sound like a battering ram striking a door and the cymbals crash like a shattering windshield. Cliff Williams’ bass is entirely absent, blended so thoroughly with the rhythm guitar that he might as well not be there. (The change in the band’s songwriting style in the post-Mutt Lange era, from aggressive but supple boogie to crashing hard rock riffs, really didn’t serve Williams well.)

This was the first AC/DC album since the Australian version of High Voltage not to feature Phil Rudd on drums. His replacement, Simon Wright, was barely 20 years old and a near-total unknown when he joined the group. His playing was as rock-steady as his predecessor’s, but the fluidity Rudd brought to the band was definitely missing; the drums on Fly slam where they should thwack.

Brian Johnson is even more tucked away in the mix than he was on Flick. This suits his performance well, though, because this was the first album on which his vocals started to suffer. You can only scream at full strength for so long without ripping your throat up, and from day one, Johnson was almost totally lacking in the subtlety and dynamics Bon Scott had brought to the group. Here, he’s hoarse, screechy, and frequently incomprehensible, so frankly, it’s a relief to hear him drowned out by the guitars.

There are several good songs on Fly On The Wall. The title track, “Sink The Pink,” and “Shake Your Foundations” all have bone-crunching riffs and shout-along choruses; each allows the band to work minor variations on their post-Back In Black style that keep them in tune with contemporary metal while still sounding very much like themselves. It’s more or less the same trick Ozzy Osbourne pulled on The Ultimate Sin. “Playing With Girls” is the fastest song on Fly, a high-stepping boogie-metal track. But it’s balanced out by “Danger,” a turgid ballad that was inexplicably the first single.

Fly On The Wall isn’t great. Three albums after what they had to know was their commercial peak, they were short on ideas, they’d lost their drummer, and Johnson’s voice wasn’t the powerful instrument it had been in 1980. Still, they were able to sell a million copies based on past glories and raw power, and honestly, there are times when its ugly, noisy mix is just the brain-scrubbing blast that’s required.