Malmsteen is at it again. He seems to have totally abandoned his neoclassical stuff for . . . blues rock and a ton of covers?





Tracklist:
- Blue Lightning
- Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix cover)
- Demon's Eye (Deep Purple cover)
- 1911 Strut
- Blue Jeans Blues (ZZ Top cover)
- Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix cover)
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles cover)
- Sun's Up Top's Down
- Peace, Please
- Paint It Black (The Rolling Stones cover)
- Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple cover)
- Forever Man (Eric Clapton cover)
- Little Miss Lover (Jimi Hendrix cover, bonus track)
- Jumping Jack Flash (The Rolling Stones cover, bonus track)

Honestly, as fantastic of a player as Yngwie is, in technique and in phrasing... I'm disappointed - not because of the stylistic shift, but because with the skill that he does have, he can really take a style like this and pull off some incredibly passionate complimentary soloing. Instead, he just decided to see how many notes he can fit in each measure.

Not to say that there's anything wrong with fast soloing in blues - I mean, especially once you build it up and set yourself up to explode through the fretboard, it's good to do something that rips and really just let loose in a sense - but this was more of the equivalent of a guy who just won't shut up and let you get a word in. It's exhausting to listen to.

A friend of mine says he needs to be in a band again so that the other members can keep him anchored. I tend to agree but also doubt that he's an easy person to work with.

Never been disappointed with a Yngiwe album. This will be an interesting change of pace.

As much as people like to rip on the guy, I admit I used to be a big Yngwie fan. I still like the guy. Especially of those first three or four records he did in the 80's. I don't know if those songs really suit his style but I'd still be interested in hearing what he does with them. And yes, he is notoriously arrogant, and I wouldn't want to be in a band with him either.

I'm bored by blues guitar unless it was played by Gary moore, r.i.p.

I'm offended by those "drums"!

I was a huge fan of Yngwie til I started playing guitar and learned their was more to playing than shredding, most of his stuff sounded pointless after that but this honestly sounded better than his earlier stuff because it at least had some sense of song structure instead of another arpeggios from hell sound-alike. I agree the guy needs to be in a band to be anchored down, something like Iced Earth or Blind Guardian.

''Get in, let's shred some wheels.''

I guess we'll have to wait a few more years to get the conventional fix of guitar shredding from Yngwie.

I'm sick of the whole rock star ''see how many notes I can fit into a bar'' shtick that this guy carries on with. I'd much rather hear him try a different style to be honest, it's really old by now.

When i think of Yngwie doing covers, i think of his effort on the G3 denver DVD.

Neo Classical noodling over a blues number...yuck.

Eh... not excited about this. He really does need an actual band again. Also, he already did a covers album, which is basically all this is. I used to look forward to every new Yngwie album, but those days are lost gone.

I was cranking some later 80's Yngwie on Amazon this weekend and I was surprised at how much good songwriting compared to pure wankery there was to be honest, a lot of ass kicking power metal. Going to start picking up his stuff...but I think I'll give this one a pass.

"Purple Haze", "Jumping Jack Flash", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"...what's the point of covering these songs in 2018? They've been played to death. Everyone's sick of them.

I was thinking "what won't he cover? "Smoke on the Water""? Then I looked at the tracklisting again, and it's there too!

freakin' "Paint it Black" too .... one of the most played-out songs ever

But are they more played out than moldy oldie blues licks?

And are moldy oldie blues licks worse than neoclassical licks over songs that don't need them?

I think it's a lot easier to sound pretentious with blues than with neoclassical. Not that neoclassical is immune to being pretentious but usually it's just really fun.

On another note (hurr hurr), along with Darkthrone's 'Arctic Thunder', we now have 'Blue Lightning' - it's starting to sound like a cheap energy drink sales convention.

I somewhat agree. Certainly blues rock has as many annoying cliches as neoclassical, and as many egomaniacs (Joe Bonamassa, for one).

That dude has straight-up ripped off Eric Johnson at times. Shameful!

I was kind of expecting another preview song by this point since 2 seems to be the standard, but maybe they're going to skip it for this one. Sun's Up Top's Down hasn't really grown on me at all in the last few weeks either.

I didn't realize this at first, but the label he's using is a pure blues label. Kinda squashes my hopes of him including some neoclassical.

Yngwie Malmsteen plays too many notes?

A shred guy shouldn't be playing the blues. That would be like asking Stevie Ray Vaughn to play shred.

Yngwie was always strict minimalist in his playing!

Rather listen to Fire and Ice again, than this new one. Good playing for sure, but I'm not so much into cover albums.

I'm a little torn on this one. On one hand, I do like when bands stick fairly close to one core genre just for ease of classification. On the other though, I don't see any reason any band or musician should have to typecast themselves if they don't want to.

Speaking of the blues, SRV and shred. It can be done wonderfully. If you have Jason Becker's talents...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5sKRNYsDME

Looks like I was just a bit too early when I said they might not be doing a second advance single. I actually kind of enjoyed this one. Never heard the original but it seems like a decent cover.

I need to ask? How have you never heard the original?

At the very least, he needs a new vocalist. Yngwie's vocals aren't very good, and are easily the weakest links of his last few albums (including this one, which I thought he would actually be more suitable towards, but he just isn't doing it for me here).

The Beatles in general are a pretty big gap in my music history knowledge. Off the top of my head I can only think of the tunes to Yellow Submarine and The Walrus. I think I listened to Helter Skelter once?

And guess what? he won't be playing the full songs when he tours to promote his album. Only playing some main riffs and then he will go straight to harmonic minor shredding.