Following AC/DC’s Black Ice release, I was so entheusiast that I rushed out to the store again and I bought No Bull. This DVD contains the full AC/DC show that was held on July 19, 1996 at the Plaza De Toro De Las Ventas in Spain (a remarkable space usually designated for bull fights). It’s almost 2 hours of ear-blowing pure hard rock like only our favorite Australian band can deliver. Even if the filming quality is not at its best, the show is very good and demonstrates once again that Angus Young is restless. In fact, he is a machine! The guy must lose 10 pounds of sweat at every show because he’s always running, jumping, spinning, etc.

Filmed after the release of the Ballbreaker album, the show includes these classic tracks:

1. Back In Black
2. Shot Down In Flames
3. Thunder Struck
4. Girl’s Got Rhythm
5. Hard As A Rock
6. Shoot To Thrill
7. Boogie Man
8. Hail Caesar
9. Hells Bells
10. Dog Eat Dog
11. The Jack
12. Ballbreaker
13. Rock And Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution
14. Dirty Deeds Done Cheap
15. You Shook Me All Night Long
16. Whole Lotta Rosie
17. T.N.T.
18. Let There Be Rock
19. Highway To Hell
20. For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)

For a guy like me who never had the chance to see AC/DC live, it’s a great piece of collection. Though it’s not the best concert I’ve seen on DVD, it’s worth the money spent to acquire it. I give it a 7/10 rate.

The world-renowned Aussies hard-rockers are back into prime time with a new release entitled Black Ice. And God it was about time that AC/DC delivered its fans some new music. The band’s last record, Stiff Upper Lip, hit the shelves back in 2000 (8 years ago). It was definitely about time! But believe me my friends, the wait was worth it because Black Ice is once again another excellent release from AC/DC.

There are no surprises in Black Ice: pure hard-rock songs recorded in AC/DC’s classic style, i.e. with a tint of blues. Brian Johnson’s voice is still as good as it was 8 years ago. No sign of fatigue here! Angus Young’s riffs are still edgy and persuasive. Cliff William’s bass guitar, Phil Rudd’s drums, Malcom Young’s rhythm guitar, everything is very tight.

I invite you to take a look at the album’s booklet to see what 8 years do on rockers in their late 50’s. The guys look quite older hahaha… William now has almost all-white hair. Rudd now sports Elvis-style sideburns. I love it hehehehe… But Angus starts to look a bit silly in his classic schoolboy uniform. But a trademark is a trademarks and you can’t touch this! So in the end it’s fine with me!

Rock And Roll Train is my favorite song on the album. Wheels is quite good either, so are Big Jack and Rock N Roll Dream. The latter one, though, has a slower beat which makes us feel that it’s almost a ballad (but is it not). The rest of the songs sound like stuff we already heard from AC/DC. Black Ice is definitely a collectionner item, a keeper as we say. Not a groundbreaking album but It’s worth a good 8,5/10. Long live to AC/DC and I just hope I’ll be able to see them in show once in my life.

Here come Evergrey with their follow-up to 2006’s excellent Monday Morning Apocalypse: a new album titled Torn. After having listened to the CD a couple of times, I just can’t say that it’s good and I can’t say it’s bad neither. Actually I don’t really know what to say about it.

Torn is a classic Evergrey album. It is smoother that its predecessor. It contains pretty good guitar solos (especially one in the song Numb that I like a lot). But it does not contain any groundbreaking songs, songs that will be remembered for a long time. The songs on the album have a very dark tone and sound pretty much the same according to me. Torn contains no surprises… Does it mean that Tom S. Englund and his bandmates have produced an average album? I don’t think so. Torn just misses some spicy elements that could make it a very good metal album. I think it’s not as good at Monday Morning Apocalypse. That’s pretty much what I have to say about it. I guess I’ll learn to appreciate Torn with further listenings. But at this moment, I’ll give it a rate of 7,5/10. And I’ll specify that the good songs on the album are probably Broken Wings, Fail, Numb and These Scars (pretty good).

Whooooo… I was trying to find sleep this weekend during the Sunday to Monday night. It was about 2 AM and I was watching TV. Let me tell you that there is absolutely nothing good on TV at this time of the night. But at some point I landed on an obscure channel where they were presenting the kind of uninteresting infommercial. And that’s when I figured out that the the clown that was trying to sell me a ultra-nice-and-powerful-innovative-cooking-gadget was in fact Mr. T himself. The guy was standing there behind the counter with his deck on and looked just… weird. The same look that he had in the 80s but with 25 additional years to the counter. The guy is almost 60 years old now and he still thinks he’s good looking as at the time when he was the head of The A Team. My only comment: scary!!!!! This did not help my to fall asleep believe me…

I just read on the web that ABC is trying to bring back to life the popular sci-fi series “V”. I was a kid when “V” was aired back in the early 80s but I remeber that I loved that show. I never missed an episode. And while I am writing this I’m asking myself why I didn’t but the DVDs yet hmmm…

The new “V” series will be written by Scott Peters and produced by Warner Bros (who had also produced the original miniseries). Can’t wait to see that!!!

We now have Stéphane Dion on the power play. What an incredible style this guy has when he handles a hockey stick!!! Let’s give him #69!

Scary…