AC/DC are gearing up to release PWR/UP, their first new album since 2014’s Rock or Bust, following recent news of their reunion. Later today, first single ‘Shot in the Dark’ will arrive in full today after being teased over the past week.
Now, in a new interview, the band’s Angus Young, Brian Johnson and Cliff Williams discussed the catalyst for their comeback and the album’s creative process. The interview also touched on the band’s late guitarist Malcolm Young, who passed away in 2017 after a fight with dementia.
“This record is pretty much a dedication to Malcolm, my brother,” Angus told Rolling Stone, adding that the album is a tribute to him in the same way the band’s 1980 album Back in Black was a tribute to late frontman Bon Scott.
The band also revealed that Malcolm’s significant presence on the album despite not actually playing on it. The late guitarist is listed as a co-writer on each of the album’s tracks alongside Angus, and it draws largely from unreleased songs Angus and Malcolm had written, mostly around the time of the band’s 2008 album Black Ice.
“There was a lot of great song ideas from that time,” Angus says during the interview. “At that time he said to me, ‘We’ll leave these songs for now. If we keep going, we’ll be overboard. We’ll get them on the next one.’ That always stuck with me. When I went through and listened to them, I said, ‘If I do anything in my life, I have to get these tracks down and get these tracks out.’”
You can read the full interview over at Rolling Stone here.
A release date has not yet been confirmed for PWR/UP.
