AC/DC If You Want Blood You've Got It

The back album cover on this 1978 release featured a prostrate Angus Young gruesomely felled by his own guitar. It’s the one fake element of this completely riotous package, but it speaks to how the band saw themselves at this early point in their career. This album was recorded in Bon Scott’s native Scotland and features the band at their prowling, unsavoury best—just a short year or so before Highway to Hell would take them to the fast lane of American radio. They are essentially a rabid, hungry cult band at this stage and they are out to prove that no genre—be it punk rock, heavy metal, or hard rock—can pin them down. The straight-off-the-board recordings make it easy to imagine how big, furious cuts like “Riff Raff” and “Let There Be Rock” went over in sweaty, cramped Australian clubs. When the rhythm kicks in during the raunchy “The Jack”, you can feel the whole house shake.