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Alchemy Yngwie Malmsteen Phantom, 1999
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Reviewed by Lucas Aykroyd
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"He's pretty steadfast in his style." That's how Bay Area guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani recently described one of his leading contemporaries, a volatile Swedish neoclassical metal guitarist whose years of residence in Florida have done nothing to diminish his adoration of Paganini and Vivaldi. The question is: can Yngwie Malmsteen reinvent himself within the European tradition and avoid creative stagnation? His latest studio album, Alchemy, suggests he has some work to do. It reprises much of what we've heard from Yngwie in the past. After stints with such heavy outfits as Steeler and Alcatrazz, Yngwie introduced himself to North America as a solo artist in 1984 with his distinctive rapid-fire sweep picking style and harmonic minor runs on the Grammy-nominated instrumental record Rising Force. While critics often railed against his musical self-indulgence, he became an idol to aspiring "shredders," who would argue over whether he played better or faster than Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads. His mass popularity peaked around 1988, when Odyssey's collection of pop-metal numbers reached number 40 on the Billboard charts, although the earlier Trilogy (1986) is considered by many fans to be his most successful melding of fantasy themes, vocal intensity and memorable licks. Perhaps Yngwie's current thinking is, If I can reach back two or three hundred years for my primary musical inspiration, why not pilfer my own output of long ago? Alchemy's opening track, "Blitzkrieg," rehashes the same Bach progression he used in "Evil Eye" on Rising Force. Like 1997's "Heathens From The North" on Facing The Animal, "Wield My Sword" is yet another poor man's version of his classic apocalyptic stomp "I Am A Viking." The Gregorian chants that open "Leonardo" give way to standard Sabbath/Purple riffage and some intriguing if clunky lyrics: "Which God may I thank/Making art from a canvas blank/Paintings from the holy book/Depicting Christ and the chance he took." The jaw-dropping six-string acrobatics of the three-part instrumental "Asylum" provide redemption at the end. A pleasant surprise on Alchemy is the return of Mark Boals on lead vocals. Not sighted since Trilogy (Yngwie goes through singers like Elizabeth Taylor does husbands), Boals pushes out the high notes with an operatic conviction that is as technically impressive as Yngwie's über-clean rhythm work and dark arpeggios. Longtime cohort Mats Olausson fills in nicely on keyboards, though he doesn't add the "second gunslinger" appeal that Jens Johansson brought to Yngwie's sound in the mid-1980s. Nary a concession to contemporary taste here, unless you count the rather cheesy digression into death metal vocals on the chorus of "Legions Of The Damned." Keening synthesizers abound. And while the double-bass drumming style employed by John Macaluso on this album has experienced a resurgence with other Scandinavian power metal bands like HammerFall and Stratovarius, it isn't commercially viable outside Japan (where Yngwie won BURRN! magazine's 1999 Champion Guitarist reader poll), Europe and South America. Which, all things considered, is still pretty good market share. Alchemy is not the ideal introduction to Yngwie Malmsteen -- that honor belongs to his first three albums. But the guitar work is so marvelous that for the steadfast fan or any classically attuned headbanger, it's still a worthwhile investment. | April 2000
Lucas Aykroyd covers the rock beat for Wall of Sound, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and other leading music publications. He is the author of 1984: The Ultimate Van Halen Trivia Book. |
Yngwie introduced himself to North America as a solo artist in 1984 with his distinctive rapid-fire sweep picking style and harmonic minor runs on the Grammy-nominated instrumental record Rising Force. While critics often railed against his musical self-indulgence, he became an idol to aspiring "shredders," who would argue over whether he played better or faster than Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads. |
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