CD Review: Yngwie Malmsteen - Attack!

Widdlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywiddlywooooo! Yes, Swedish neo-classical guitar shredder Yngwie Malmsteen has a new album out.

As ever, the revolving door of musicians gives yet another line-up. This time he's got ex-Rainbow singer Doogie White, former Dream Theater man Derek Sherinian on keys, and Yngwie stalwart Patrick Johansson on drums.

Musically, it's much what we expect from a Yngwie album; a lot of blindingly-fast scales and arpeggios, and songs with violent imagery. Sadly, most of the songs are fairly ordinary, with the standouts being the two of the instrumentals, "Majestic Blue" and "Air". Derek Sherinian's talents are largely wasted, since the keys are mostly inaudible. On one song, Yngwie proves to the world he can't sing when he takes the vocals of "Freedom isn't Free".

Lyrics are either mindless macho crap or gloriously dumb, depending on your opinion. For example, in "Valhalla", we get this Spinal tap-esqu gem:

We come from the north We come from the ice We live dangerously And very short lives We fight day by day Sailing the seas

Makes his earlier "I am a Viking" look like a classic.

Overall, this is neither better nor worse than any of his previous umpteen albums. Yngwie has been a parody of himself for years. Although he's got an undoubted instrumental talent, he's never been more than a mediocre songwriter and a truly terrible lyricist. He really ought to team up with a singer that writes, but sadly his gigantic ego prevents him from collaborating with anyone else with some compositional talent, I'd love to hear him do an album with Dio, for instance, but I can't see it ever happening.

I'll rate this one as a mere two (out of five)