AC/DC have been on the highway to hell and back.

In 2016, longtime vocalist Brian Johnson was forced to leave the band midtour after suffering severe hearing loss, which doctors warned could lead to total deafness. Then bassist Cliff Williams announced he was quitting, citing a much-needed break. This was all after drummer Phil Rudd bowed out in 2015 due to myriad legal problems, and founding member Malcolm Young retired in 2014 due to a dementia diagnosis. He died of effects of the disease in 2017 at age 64.

After so much sadness and strife, lead guitarist Angus Young had doubts AC/DC would ever reunite.

“The world’s always an unknown thing. We never know what comes tomorrow,” Young tells USA TODAY. “You think, ‘Maybe one day we’ll all get back together, get an album and strum on that stage.'”

‘I think he would be proud’:AC/DC on comeback single, paying tribute to late Malcolm Young

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Although live music is largely on hold due to COVID-19, the Australian hard-rock icons did manage two of those three things. The band’s 17th studio album, “Power Up,” is out now, marking their first original effort since 2014’s “Rock or Bust.” The rollicking new music reassembles Young, Johnson, Rudd and Williams, along with rhythm guitarist Stevie Young, who stepped in for his uncle Malcolm six years ago.

The idea for “Power Up” came about in 2018, when AC/DC’s management approached Angus Young about doing another album. He and Malcolm had written but never recorded a number of songs, which he wanted to dust off as a tribute to his late older brother.

“We always thought, ‘Well, we’ll get these on the next album,’ but never (did),” says Young, 65. “So I thought, ‘This is probably a good time to get some of them, see if they need any vamping up and put them out there.'”

Luckily, it didn’t take much convincing to get the band back together. Thanks to some revolutionary hearing aid technology, which Johnson can’t speak about due to a nondisclosure agreement, the singer was able to safely rejoin and record with the group.

“We’ve pretty much got it licked with this new equipment,” Johnson, 73, says of his hearing loss. “Angus and management phoned and said, ‘You fancy getting together?’ I just grabbed it with both hands and said, ‘Absolutely, I’d love a shot at doing that.’ You don’t realize sometimes how much you miss things. I missed the boys, and the way the boys make music. So it didn’t take much to get me. I was on board straight away.”

Williams, 70, was equally eager to come back into the fold after his sudden departure in 2016.

“I had a couple of medical issues and that would’ve been a tough tour to finish, quite frankly. At the end of it, I was kind of done,” he says. “So when this came about, I definitely wanted to do it. I was happy for the opportunity to be involved.”

Raucous opening track “Realize” was the first song they recorded for the 12-track effort, which was made in Vancouver in late 2018 and early 2019. The album was preceded by cheeky lead single “Shot in the Dark” last month, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard mainstream rock songs chart this week (their first to top the chart since 2008’s “Rock N Roll Train”).