Ballbreaker by AC/DC

Ballbreaker, AC/DC's thirteenth studio album, came out in 1995 and marks the homecoming of Phil Rudd, the drummer who had been gone since the Flick of the Switch sessions in 1983. He'd turned up backstage at an AC/DC show in Auckland in 1991, floated the idea of coming back, and in August 1994 the band took him up on it, leaving Chris Slade, who had been cutting demos with them in London, out in the cold.

With Rudd's deep, no-frills swing back underneath, the old machine clicks into place: Angus Young's lead guitar stinging, Malcolm Young's rhythm guitar locked to Cliff Williams' bass, Brian Johnson howling over the top. Rick Rubin and Mike Fraser share the production credit, and the record sticks to the hard rock and blues rock the band has always simply called rock and roll. "Hail Caesar" is the one that made the countdowns, and this was the first of five albums Rudd went on to make with them.

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