Yngwie Malmsteen - Perpetual Flame

There has been much banter on the internet about the laughable cover of the sacred Yngwie’s latest opus ‘Perpetual Flame’. If only photoshop could be applied to music so easily, to make it sound young and fresh.

It’s no secret how much I respect and constantly defend Count Malmsteen, but on this occasion, he’s on his own. ‘Perpetual Flame’ is all of your least favourite Malmsteen tracks on one CD. The poor lyrical content is highlighted even more this time round because the music is so weak. Maybe I shouldn’t review this album at all, but I figured that it would be more entertaining to write about than the new Tesla album, which is fairly good (if a little bland), but way better than this and probably even better than the new AC/DC album as well. (If you're interested, it’s called ‘Forever More’, it's not bad, is released in November, but comes nowhere near to their first three albums).

Overview!

Since the late 80’s, song-writing has never really been Yngwie’s strongpoint and this opinion is spectacularly summed up here. This is such a shame, as his previous affair ‘Unleash The Fury’, featured some fantastic tracks and the future then looked way brighter than this sudden darkness.

Amazingly for yet another album self-produced by Yngwie, the guitars are still muddy and lost far too frequently. His ego seems to act in reverse when it comes to pushing the fader with ‘YJM Solo’ chinagraphed beneath it. Think back to Nuno Bettencourt’s production of ‘III Sides To Every Story’ – now that is how an album should sound when produced by the lead guitar player!

Tim Owens sounds pretty good (if you like battle metal vocals), but all credit is lost by him agreeing to sing such absurd lyrics. Yngwie’s guitar playing is as exceptional, but predictable as always. There are some blistering solos in the style of himself, but he has also run out of decent musical-bed ideas to blister over the top of. This was once part of his magic - the dramatic key change smothered by a stupendous solo and repeat to end…

Conclusion

My wife just said to me as she walked passed my office, “This is the sort of music that puts people off heavy rock…” Well, that’s her take and she’s not wrong.

Not to be confused with Jason Becker’s ‘Perpetual Burn’.