AC/DC’s forthcoming new album Black Ice, has been leaked on to the file sharing service BitTorrent, and downloaded an estimated 400,000 times, even though the official release isn’t until October 20th and the band have no intention of making it available online.

In a bizarre twist, and a display of not wholly unsurprising pettiness, the bands label Sony have allegedly released several ‘fake’ AC/DC song online, in an attempt to hamper users attempting to download the album.

Website TorrentFreak however have claimed that there is no evidence of the fake tracks online.

Despite of, or maybe due to, AC/DC’s boycott of iTunes and other download services they still enjoy huge album sales - last year alone the shifted some 1.3 million units in the States.

Guitarist Angus Young told the Telegraph: “We don’t make singles, we make albums.

“We believe the songs on any of our albums belong together”