Black Ice (album) - Production

Production

Black Ice is AC/DC's sixteenth studio album release in Australia and their fifteenth international release. The band took a break after finishing the Stiff Upper Lip World Tour in 2001, and resumed performing in 2003, with eight presentations that included AC/DC's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and they opened three concerts for The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang Tour. During those two years, guitarists Angus Young and Malcolm Young wrote music separately, then met in a London studio to work on new songs.

The production of Black Ice was delayed for several reasons. AC/DC left their label Atlantic Records, signed a deal with Sony Music and changed labels within Sony from Epic Records to Columbia Records. Bass guitarist Cliff Williams suffered an injury to his hand in 2005 and was unable to play for 18 months. While Williams was recovering, the Young brothers perfected the songs they had written. Angus revealed that there was no pressure from Sony for the band to release a new album, as the label was releasing DVDs and remasters of the AC/DC catalogue, and thus the group "could afford to sit back and say we’ll do another album when we think we’ve got all the goods." In a 2004 interview, vocalist Brian Johnson said that Angus had written harder riffs than those on Stiff Upper Lip and that he would be writing song lyrics for the first time since the band's 1988 album Blow Up Your Video, but all tracks on Black Ice are credited to the Youngs. On January 2006, Malcolm revealed in an interview that the band was working on a new album.

While producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange expressed an interest in working again with AC/DC, his schedule did not allow this. When the Young brothers called Columbia Records' president Steve Barnett to announce the making of a new album, Barnett recommended producer Brendan O'Brien. Angus said the band had considered talking to O'Brien since the 1990s, as "he seemed to us a very competent professional" and because he and Malcolm the band would benefit from working with a producer they had not worked with before.

On 3 March 2008, recording started at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, where Stiff Upper Lip was recorded, and lasted for eight weeks. Engineer Mike Fraser, who has mixed all AC/DC albums since The Razors Edge, said they recorded in batches of three songs to "keep things interesting" and to avoid overextended sessions. According to Fraser, the band had not rehearsed the songs before entering the studio. Despite "a couple of tweaks in the writing, sparkling up the choruses a bit better" during the recording, the compositions were mostly complete. Still, the Young brothers had new ideas during production, including the song "Anything Goes", which was written when the studio sessions were nearly finished. The songs were mostly recorded live in the studio; the instruments and backing vocals were recorded in the live room and the vocals at both the control room and an overdubbing booth. The performances were first recorded with analogue equipment, as Fraser considers that tape conveys "the sound of rock & roll", and then digitised for mixing and overdubs. Fraser tried to not alter the original recordings – "I used Pro-Tools purely as a tape machine" – with no effects on the bass and rhythm guitar, sparse delay and reverb effects on the vocals and other instruments and overdubs were only used for the lead guitar and vocals.

The first title considered for the album was Runaway Train. Malcolm suggested using a photograph of a famous 1895 derailment for the cover, but reconsidered after he found that Mr. Big had used it for their album Lean into It. According to Angus, Runaway Train was rejected was because it had been used by many musicians, including Elton John, Tom Petty and Eric Clapton, and he "wanted something unique, new, different". So he suggested Black Ice, which refers to gigs played during winter in Scotland. He said, "it rolled off the tongue" and it reminded him of "radio warnings up north of black ice." Angus was inspired to write the eponymous song by a similar warning heard on his car radio during production.