AC/DC, 1977 — Atco Records publicity photo for Let There Be Rock (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
AC/DC
The Young brothers built the most consistent riff machine in rock history, and everyone insists on splitting it in two: the Bon Scott era and the Brian Johnson era. Before and after. Original and replacement.
We don’t buy the split — and Bon himself is the reason why. The two eras are one wired system, connected years before anyone needed a new singer. That connection is where our AC/DC coverage started, and the band keeps rewarding the systems view: same three chords, same swing, fifty years of proof that simple is not the same as easy.
Pull a thread
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap at 50: The AC/DC Album Atlantic US Refused to Release
Out in Australia on 20 September 1976, turned down by Atlantic’s American office, and finally in US shops in March 1981, thirteen months after Bon Scott died. It went to number 3.
The record that took five years to cross the Pacific
Fifty years ago this weekend, AC/DC put out their third Australian album on Albert Productions. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was produced by Harry Vanda and George Young, the older brother of Malcolm and Angus, and it was made in a hurry. Malcolm Young later told the story plainly: “We didn’t have much time to do that album… All we did was go straight into the studio,” fresh off the High Voltage tour (Parade, via Yahoo).
Three Sisters, One Pocket: What The Warning's Fifth Album Says About Rock's Family Bands
“Kerosene” put a Monterrey trio at No. 1 on Mainstream Rock Airplay — the first Mexican band and the first all-women band to do it in the chart’s 45 years. The interesting part isn’t the milestone. It’s what a shared childhood actually does to a rhythm section, and why the answer isn’t what anyone assumes.
The album, quickly, because it’s the excuse and not the story
The Warning released Everything’s Falling on 28 August 2026 — album five, twelve tracks, 39:04, out on Lava/Republic and produced by Anton DeLost. Three singles led it out: “Kerosene” in March, “Ego” in May, “Ritual” in June. It landed on ten Billboard charts, including No. 2 Top Rock Albums and No. 4 Top Hard Rock Albums.
Rush's Fifty Something tour has no drum solo
Geddy Lee gets asked the same question every night: is Neil “with” them? His answer involves a bird. The band’s actual answer is an empty spot in the setlist. It’s the rarest solution rock has ever found to an impossible problem.
The bird in the doorway
A Toronto radio DJ, Joanne Wilder of Q107, asked Geddy Lee the question everyone wants to ask and nobody quite knows how to phrase: do you feel like Neil is with you? Have you seen any signs?
Queen has never made an album with Adam Lambert — and that's why he's still there
Roger Taylor says a return to the stage is “more down to Brian.” Fifteen years in, the thing that keeps Adam Lambert safe is the record Queen never finished.
Asked in June 2026 whether Queen would play live again, Roger Taylor did not say the band was tired. He said something stranger, and more useful:
“Well, it is a big machine to gear up, if you know what I mean.”
"Chop Suey!" Is Diamond, and Heavy Music's Entire RIAA Diamond Club Is Five Songs Certified in 30 Months
System of a Down’s 2001 single peaked at #76, got pulled from radio after 9/11 and never sold ten million of anything. On August 28 it became the fifth heavy song ever to hit RIAA Diamond. The other four got there since February 2024. That timing is the whole story.
What Diamond actually counts
Diamond is the RIAA’s ten million mark. For most of its life that meant ten million copies sold, which is why the club was built out of Whitney Houston and Elton John and almost nothing with a distorted guitar in it. Then the RIAA folded downloads and streams into the count, and “ten million units” stopped describing a purchase and started describing a habit. A song can get there now without a physical copy changing hands in years.
AC/DC Swapped One Song in Late 2025 and Handed the Setlist Majority Back to Bon Scott
The Power Up tour’s US leg opened in Charlotte with 21 songs: 11 from the Bon Scott years, 10 from Brian Johnson’s. That split is seven months old, and it took exactly one substitution to produce it.
Setlists are the only document a band publishes without meaning to. Nobody issues a press release saying “we’ve decided our dead singer’s material is what people actually want.” They just print the running order and hand it to the lighting crew.
Sepultura's Rock in Rio setlist is Derrick Green-only — and the discography says that's the correct call
On September 5 Sepultura open the Palco Mundo at Rock in Rio with no “Roots Bloody Roots,” no “Arise,” no “Ratamahatta.” Nothing from the founding era. Look at what the band recorded and the omission stops looking like a snub.
What was announced, two days before the show
On September 3, 2026, Sepultura let it out: the Rock in Rio set would be drawn exclusively from material recorded with Derrick Green, from Against (1998) through The Cloud of Unknowing, the four-track EP released on April 24, 2026. The three songs everyone in that field knows by heart, the ones from the Max Cavalera years, are not on the list (Rolling Stone Brasil). The band opens the day on the main stage (Wikimetal).
Bon Scott at 80: The 1973 Geordie Gig That Secretly Connected AC/DC's Two Eras
Bon Scott would have turned 80 on July 9. The best way to honor him skips the highlight reel and goes back to the night in 1973 when he watched Brian Johnson scream himself off a stage, filed it away, and accidentally wrote the ending of his own band’s story seven years early.
The myth we’re here to break
There’s a version of AC/DC history everyone carries around: two bands, cleanly split. The Bon Scott era, sweaty, sly and dangerous, and the Brian Johnson era, the stadium machine that made Back in Black. Before and after, original and replacement.