Flick of the Switch (1983)
1. Rising Power
2. The House is on Fire
3. Flick of the Switch
4. Nervous Shakedown
5. Landslide
6. Guns for Hire
7. Deep in the Hole
8. Bedlam in Belgium
9. Landslide
10.Brain Shake
If ever an album captured a band at both a creative and critical crossroads, it’s this one. Released in 1983, Flick of the Switch is AC/DC’s resounding answer to an industry that had largely moved on. The age of arena rock had been abruptly displaced by the sharp suits and sharper synths of New Wave. Duran Duran were in Vogue, and The Police were saving the world one reggae-tinged bassline at a time. AC/DC? They were seen as relics of another era. And yet, paradoxically, this is precisely what makes the album so fascinating.
There was no real attempt to appease contemporary fashion. No glossy keyboards, no radio-friendly concessions, no Bryan Ferry impersonations. Instead, what we got was a stripped-down, defiantly unpolished reaffirmation of everything the band ever stood for: crunching riffs, howling vocals, and a rhythm section that stomped rather than swung. It was, in short, AC/DC producing AC/DC — and for that, they deserve no small credit.
To contextualize: this was a band under internal pressure. The polished veneer of For Those About to Rock had left a bad taste, and Mutt Lange, architect of their earlier commercial success, was gone. In his place, the band took the reins themselves. Perhaps not entirely wisely — but certainly honestly. Drummer Phil Rudd, soon to be ousted amidst tales of excess and exhaustion, laid down his final beats here. The atmosphere was tense. The expectations? Non-existent. And yet, Flick of the Switch quietly delivers.
The opener, Rising Power, is uncharacteristically weak — a lurching, unfocused thing that harks back to the worst tendencies of the previous record. But from there, the band swiftly recovers. Tracks like This House Is on Fire and the title track are raw, feral slices of riff-driven rock that remind us just how potent this band can be when left to their own devices. Angus and Malcolm Young are very much at the wheel here, their guitars locked in the kind of snarling synchronicity that powered their finest work.
Production-wise, this is the sonic opposite of Lange’s glossy maximalism. Everything sounds immediate, dry, and close. It is not a “big” record in the sense of modern hard rock, but it is aggressive and direct — almost garage-like in execution. There are no tricks, no distractions, and precious few overdubs. At times, this honesty verges on self-sabotage — particularly on the weaker closing tracks, where repetition edges toward monotony.
But when it works — and more often than not, it does — it sounds like the band shaking off the cobwebs and rediscovering the grimy essence that made Powerage or Let There Be Rock so iconic.
Commercially, it was always destined to be overlooked. AC/DC were out of step with the times, and this record made no effort to catch up. But there’s a kind of integrity in that refusal — an instinctive, perhaps even stubborn, commitment to their own sound. And in hindsight, that sound has aged better than most of their contemporaries.
Flick of the Switch is not a great album. But it is a very good one — lean, loud, and unrepentant. It deserved more then, and it certainly earns respect now.
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