Yngwie J. Malmsteen - Trilogy
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Free Music Notes for Trilogy
Free Music Review: From Little Viking to Dwarf
Hit: 2 Stars
Yngwie's third album is just abysmal in comparison to what he had produced before and just isn't worth buying in my opinion.
The music just becomes more formulaic in terms of technique and the lyrics are just cheesy. 'Queen is in Love'? The song makes even Journey sound heavy. 'The Fury' is ok and so are the instrumentals but none measure up to what he had produced on his two previous albums. 'Magic Mirror' sounds like a song from a Disney cartoon. Malmsteen just leaves no space for talent other than his own and he doesn't show much of it on this album. DeSoto never wanted to be a metal singer and was looking for a gig as a power rock singer to the likes of Survivor: it sounds like it. I had the unique opportunity of seeing Malmsteen perform while touring for this album. Great soloist without question but having a band is just that: being a band and not just a soloist. That's why Satriani, McAlpine, etc., never made it anywhere either. I also saw Malmsteen perform as a stand in with Dio in Irvine and he sounded great. He would have been a perfect replacement for Vivian Campbell. It would have made for an interesting collaboration but I don't think the egos of either performer would have gotten along: too bad.
Ultimately, the main impediment to Yngwie's success was his overwhelming ego at wanting to be the whole band and trying to turn metal into classical. And so, true to his Swedish pseudonym of 'Yngwie', he ended up remaining just that: just a 'little viking.' In this album he's acutally a dwarf Viking.
Free Music Review: Great set of solos, and it ROCKS! A true gem!
Hit: 5 Stars
I won't give to this album five stars just because this was the first album I heard from Yngwie and I was completely blown away by his guitar fireworks. No! Instead, I will give five stars to this album because it contains a subset of the greatest solos Yngwie ever spitted in the middle of his songs. From the expressive-but-flashy ones on "You don't remember I never forget" and "Queen in Love", the furious guitar-keyboard lines in "Liar" and "Fury", the beautifully dark solo in "Dark Ages", to the meaningful and tastefully neoclassic solo on "Fire"; Yngwie showcases here why he was one of the greatest gunslingers (if not the greatest!) in the middle eighties.
And if good, impeccably played solos weren't enough to earn five stars, then I'll add that the opener "You don't remember I never forget", as cheesy as it gets, is one of Yngwie's catchiest songs ever. Also, listen to "Queen in love". Isn't that one a memorable song too? Ok, Mark Boals perhaps doesn't sound like Jeff Scott Soto (matter of taste!), but he still does know how to sing. And he sings GREATLY here. Mark Boals is a top metal vocalist for sure! And what about the Johansson brothers on the keys and the drums respectively? These guys add a lot to this very tight incarnation of Rising Force, just to deliver the goods with high energy and professionalism. Five stars to the band as to the album!
But wait, there's even more to "Trilogy". For example, do you still think that Yngwie is just about a flurry of notes? Well, I'm afraid you are WRONG! Yngwie has a lot of feeling too, as well as a great control of dynamics, a great lead tone and a great finger vibrato. You could still listen to any solo from this album to see what I mean, but I'll instead make a special mention to the masterpiece "Crying". You listen to that instrumental song, and only a deaf would come back to talk again about "emotionless playing" and "Yngwie" on the same sentence. "Crying" says it all, as the guy goes from a gentle weeping to a total anguished crying at the end. Yngwie Malmsten was the real deal back then, believe me!
Thus, no matter how egocentric Yngwie might look (or really be), I give credit to him for redefining what metal lead guitar is about. For the dessert, just have a listen to "Trilogy Suite Op. 5" to taste how the scariest guitar chops a human being can play are put to work for a true musical opus. Nowadays Yngwie might have ruled out of ideas, but in the eighties he was the man, no doubt about it. Just listen to the "Trilogy" album on its entirety to confirm that fact. Five shiny shredding stars!
Free Music Review: Shallow, but fun all the same.
Hit: 3 Stars
I picked up a copy of Yngwie Mamsteen's album "Trilogy" recently for two reasons:
1: It was cheap.
2: He was a major influence on Dragonforce, one of my favourite bands.
Even so, I was duely pessimistic when I saw the cover. Anyone would be when they see a man duelling with a three-headed dragon armed only with a guitar. However, when I got home and stuck it on, I discovered that "Trilogy," while far from being a masterful composition, wasn't quite the masturbatory shred-fest I had been expecting.
The majority of the guitar work on this album, while admittedly quite shallow and one-dimensional, is at least catchy and uplifting. The solos (which, let's face it, were inevitable) are in fact surprisingly well integrated into the song structures. The drumming is utterly unremarkable - your standard issue snare/bass/crash cymbal kind of deal. The keyboards, on the other hand, genuinely add something to the songs, providing a backbone of harmonious melody and giving the songs a touch of theatrical flair. Yes, they are utterly cheesy and poppy, but at the end of the day, they're fun.
Mark Boals' vocal performance is something of a mixed bag. On one hand, you have his melodious oparetic calls on songs like "Liar," providing a genuinely uplifting feeling. On the other, you have the likes of "Magic Mirror," where he descends into weak, banal, pop metal diahrhea. My estimation would be that while he is a competent vocalist, he can't hope to compare with the likes of Bruce Dickinson and Rob Halford.
One of this album's main problems is the repetitive and predictable songwriting. The standard verse/chorus song structure is adhered to rigidly, every song providing the same up-tempo guitaring, cheesy, theatrical keyboards and 16th note drumming. While this formula isn't inherantly poor, it does get old quickly.
A more important problem comes in the form of the lack of power. The ultra-clean production on this record has resukted in a very smooth, clear guitar sound. This is no doubt included for the benefit of the guitar vituosos this album is aimed at. However, for those of us looking simply for enjoyable music, the weak sounding production can become annoying.
Two exceptions to the rules can be found in the instrumental tracks "Trilogy" has to offer. The first of these comes in the form of the fourth track, "Crying." This was, for me, undoubtedly the highlight of the album. Genuinely touching, emotive melodies butress Yngwies phenomenal guitar work, an opportunity for him showcase his skill in a musical, expressive manner.
The second instrumental is "Trilogy Suite Op: 5," the album's closing track and is virtually the antithesis of "Crying," Sterile, meaningless shredding is the name of the game here, just what I was afraid of when I bought this album. Anything on this seven minute monstrosity remotely resembling musicality is quite quickly lost among more directionless, self-indulgent wankery.
I think I should probably point out that this album only just made three stars in my eyes. As technical as it is, I can't help but feel that Yngwie Malmsteen is really little more than a mediocre songwriter, and at the end of the day songwriting is what counts. Guitar vituosos will love this for what it is, but for everyone else, the musical value of this album is limited. If you can get "Trilogy" cheap and you can't find anything better, then by all means pick it up for a quick hit of fun, catchy music, but don't expect it to be any more than that. And don't bother with the last track; the last time I listened to it, I couldn't listen to another guitar solo for days without shuddering.
Free Music Review: Buy this and Marching Out
Hit: 5 Stars
OK I admit it - I bought this album, my first Yngwie album, from a pawn broker for a couple of dollars because the cover looked cool. And all these years later I'm very happy I did. So thank you David Herrernan for the artwork that caught my eye.
As for the music we find Trilogy is a continuation of Marching Out in many ways, the defiant lyrics against supernatural foe etc but we also find something totally new in the mix. A certain connectivity in the music and lyrics that was steadfastly absent from most of Marching Out. Lead cut and single You Don't Remember, I'll Never Forget isn't too different from Don't Let it End but there is a feeling of this being more a song for the common man. Elsewhere we get Liar, again a straight down the line rocker about being hard done by.
Trilogy succeeds because amongst the slightly simplified, less 'metal' structures there is a strong melding of more mainstream lyrical concern and tender moments such as the semi acoustic instrumental Crying to the full on racket of Fury and Fire. The goth metal of magic Mirror and Dark Ages show off new throat Mark Boals' abilities - and seriously how many great musicians did Yngwie bring to our attentions? And there is also the defining instrumental of Trilogy Suite Op.5. This latter easily joins Black Star and Far Beyond the Sun from the debut as prime time slices of Malmsteens musical vision.
Malmsteen, on this better produced album, had the self confidence in the studio to come up with this amalgam of metal, hard rock and goth that has a number of very strong tunes on it. An example of how this album works is the aforementioned Liar which is at odds in many ways with the quasi romantic, quite gothic Queen In Love yet due to the full rock attack with which they are played they sit beside each other on this release happily.
Theis would be my pick to any friend who was interested in Yngwie, along with Marching Out. To me this is perhaps the last 100% satisfying Malmsteen release. Great guitar work, fiercely talented fret burning backed by great vox and the backing band, here comprising Jens Johansson (keys) Anders Johansson (D) and the crisp and bright production values add up to a fine package of hard rock/ heavy metal.
Free Music Review: Best guitarist ever!
Hit: 5 Stars
Of the myriad Yngwie Malmsteen albums to own, this is one of them, especially for guitar players (neven guitar aficionados). Also, Trilogy, Odyssey, Marching Out, and the Concerto Suite with the orchestra are all very good, with a definite must have is the Live in Leningrad show. Yngwie does a 10-minute solo that fuses his neo-classical style with blues and other genres, and it is simply amazing. Yngwie does like to play fast for a long time, and quite consistently, which turns away a lot of people looking for simple guitar lines (which is a shame). I just saw him live last weekend and can say that his finger speed in person is dazzling. Scalloped frets or not, he can play blindingly fast anywhere on the guitar, and the cleanliness of both his picking and fingering hands while he plays above the 12th fret is simply amazing. But when he broke it down and played some bluesy tunes, it was just as amazing. And he can play the classical guitar as fluently as he does the electric, which is refreshing. Yngwie can be described as an amalgamation of metal, blues, and classical mixed together to present a heterogeneous style that is unique and appreciable.
Yngwie influenced some of the best guitarists out there, such as Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, and Vinnie Moore (Tony MacAlpine is good too but is a far better keyboardist). Check out some of the Cacophony (Friedman & Becker) and Racer X (Gilbert) material, it is phenomenal, and you can notice the influence Yngwie's neo-classical style had (arpeggios galore). If Jason Becker had not gotten ALS (known commonly as "Lou Gehrig's disease") he would be competing with Yngwie for the role as the best rock guitarist on Earth.
Any guitarist who bashes Yngwie as merely a shredder (a complete misnomer) needs to consider switching to a more suitable instrument, perhaps the lute.
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