Dave Mustaine on his favourite AC/DC album: “The rawest form of speed”
AC/DC may often be dismissed as simplistic, crude, or one-dimensional, but the band remains secure in the knowledge of their undeniable impact on rock music. They set out to strip rock ‘n’ roll back to its roots, injecting swing and vitality into a genre that had become an overblown, rigid shadow of its former self—and they succeeded. Drawing inspiration from classic blues legends like Muddy Waters and 1960s icons such as Jimi Hendrix, their raw, frenetic energy left an indelible mark on the world of metal, influencing titans like Dave Mustaine, Metallica, and Slayer.
It might seem strange that the work of Angus Young and the rest of his group would have such an indelible consequence on the world of heavy music when you consider that it is a realm often noted for its musical complexity. Yet, examining every aspect of their work for more than just a fleeting second, it becomes apparent how thrash and stoner emerged partly due to them.
Whether it be Young’s feverish, piercing work, which encompasses metallic soloing and chugging progressions, the attitude and wailing delivery of frontmen Bon Scott and Brian Johnson, or the pounding rhythm section, several key facets of AC/DC’s sound clearly influenced the development of a series of heavy forms in their wake.
One area of metal particularly indebted to them is thrash, with all of the ‘Big Four’ bands outlining their love of the group. Former Metallica guitarist and Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine has long been a prominent adherent of the Australian rockers. In a 2024 interview with AXS TV’s Vinyl Obsession, he named 1977’s Let There Be Rock, the record that produced ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’, as his favourite by the band.
It was the first record he ever bought at the local record store. At 16, Mustaine had been listening to more straightforward metal acts like UFO and had no idea that his world was about to be “completely rocked” by AC/DC. The experience was life-changing, something he says has only happened a handful of times since. Among those transformative moments are listening to his own band’s Countdown to Extinction (a famously humble man), Metallica’s Black Album, and Guns N’ Roses’ debut, Appetite for Destruction.
Scott’s raw, elemental singing was a major factor in why Mustaine was instantly captivated and became a devoted fan of AC/DC. To him, the frontman embodied everything that made the band exceptional. Despite being relatively inexperienced in music at the time, Mustaine had no doubt that AC/DC was destined for global domination—a prediction that came true just a few years later with 1980’s Back in Black, their first album with Brian Johnson following Scott’s untimely death earlier that year.
It wasn’t just the singing that was transformative for the future thrash pioneer; it was the energy, and he’d never heard anything like it. Of course, this velocity was something that he and the rest of the thrash innovators would take to breakneck levels when in their heyday. To him, Let There Be Rock was the “most rawest form of speed” available to a human that wasn’t a narcotic, and it provided a blueprint for him moving forward.
He said: “This was probably the purest, most rawest form of speed and adrenaline that a person could possibly ever get without physically ingesting any kind of a substance. So yeah, I loved this record. I remember I became such an AC/DC fan that I had every version of every record you could possibly get, every different release, different versions of the same exact album, just because the song order is mixed up. I was in.”
Whether it be Megadeth classics Countdown to Extinction or Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying?, or even Mustaine’s early work with Metallica, the influence of AC/DC can be heard loud and clear. From the chugging riffs to the swinging beat of the drums, thrash succeeded in refreshing the metal genre, and a reason they achieved this was by simplifying it and putting energy front and centre of the mix. That’s precisely what AC/DC did with rock.
