More than 25 years after they started it, AC/DC are still playing it - the riff. The same sticklebacked three-chord trick has been their passport from adolescent Australian pub roistering to the venerable global institution they are now, not so much transcending prevailing musical trends as standing to one side, bemused at why people would want to try doing anything else. On witnessing this latest restatement of principles, that little conundrum at least is easily explained: people simply have to try doing something else, because nobody else plays deafeningly loud nuts-and-bolts basic rhythm and blues like AC/DC.
"Wheeee!" gasps the molten tar-larynxed Brian Johnson. "We got a shitload o' great rock songs for you tonight. Hard to pick 'em, innit?" Statements do not come more rhetorical. AC/DC are so constrained by their own legend that half of this two-hour set picks itself. Smarter men than they would struggle to assimilate such a vast complement of noise. During the band's fallow period, stretching from the mid-1980s until 1996's Rick Rubin-produced renaissance LP, Ballbreaker, this was hardly a problem. But this year's Stiff Upper Lip is their best since the epochal Back in Black, so for its spring-heeled boogie nirvana to merit similarly scant treatment is little short of scandalous.
Fortunately, just as Van Gogh painted the same vase of flowers a hundred times without diminishing the wonder of his art, so AC/DC make a virtue out of endlessly reploughing the same gnarly furrow, each time unearthing hitherto unimagined nuggets of base wisdom.
Rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young is the group's core. Willingly overshadowed by younger brother Angus's barmy showmanship, Malcolm does very much the same thing in every song, because that's what every song demands. Only he knows for sure how many times he has played Highway to Hell, but it always sounds like the first. No wonder he's one of the few guitar-players to whom Keith Richards pays respect. Indeed, AC/DC are probably the only band today who could credibly claim to rock like the Rolling Stones in their satanic majestic pomp.
Not that they themselves would claim such a thing. Egos aren't allowed in this most self-effacing outfit. Brian Johnson has been lead singer for nearly three times as long as his deceased predecessor Bon Scott, yet he still happily screeches his way through chunks of Scott's canon without a murmur. How long his 52-year-old lungs can stand the strain must be a moot point. But so long as there are riffs to be played, AC/DC are the only ones fit to play them.
• At Sheffield Arena (0114-256 5656) tonight, then touring.
