Wherein AC/DC begins their ascent to their commercial peak, commencing the Great Slowing Down at the same time. Highway To Hell is the first of three albums the band would record with producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, a South African expat who’d previously worked with artists on the UK pub rock scene like Graham Parker, the Boomtown Rats, and the Motors. Recorded in two different studios — one in Miami and one in London — the album was the band’s most polished and surprisingly eclectic to date. It was also their first album to have exactly the same tracklisting in all territories: no last-minute changes to the mix, nothing taken off or added.

The two or three songs everybody knows from Highway To Hell are its opening title track, “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It),” which shares its title with their breathtaking 1978 live album, and “Night Prowler,” which got them in a lot of trouble, thanks to L.A. serial killer Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramírez. More about that later.

“Highway To Hell” is the song that sets the pattern for the rest of AC/DC’s career. Abandoning the fast boogie attack of earlier anthems like “Let There Be Rock,” “Whole Lotta Rosie,” “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” etc., it’s a slow-burning, stomping track with a chorus made to be chanted in an arena, not shouted along with in a bar. The band also slows down a lot on “Walk All Over You,” but only on the chorus, which is half the speed of the verses — a weird choice, but one that serves to make the song much more memorable than it might otherwise be.

Many of the other songs on Highway To Hell are still quite fast, but they’re also more experimental … kinda. “Girls Got Rhythm” is built on an almost new wave or power pop guitar riff and a hard-grooving beat; it’s like late ’70s Rick James crossed with the Knack. “Touch Too Much” has a gloss that prefigures Billy Squier and other early ’80s AOR radio kings, while “Get It Hot” sounds like they’d been listening to the Rolling Stones’ Some Girls a lot, and “Love Hungry Man” is almost … funk.

“If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” is a classic AC/DC jackhammer, with lyrics about how badass they are (using Christians thrown to the lions as a metaphor, in a way that makes you think they’d be into that) and some of Angus Young’s most face-ripping guitar soloing ever. “Night Prowler,” on the other hand, is one of the band’s bluesiest songs, and finds Bon Scott returning to tales of crime and cruelty for the last time. His voice is harsh and hoarse; he almost sounds like Accept’s Udo Dirkschneider. The song is clearly written from the point of view of a murderer — the couplet “And you don’t feel the steel / Till it’s hangin’ out your back” gives the game away. Years later, “Night Prowler” would link the band to serial murderer Richard Ramírez, who was a fan. At one point, police claimed Ramírez was seen wearing an AC/DC shirt, and left a hat with their logo at one of his crime scenes. This caused the band to insist, on VH1’s Behind The Music, that the song was actually about a guy sneaking into his girlfriend’s bedroom at night. Yeah, right.