Yngwie Malmsteen's over-the-top, dazzling guitar playing fills the grooves of this long LP: "The Yngwie Malmsteen Collection", brought to your ears by the guy who said that he doesn't owe Ritchie Blackmore a thing, notwithstanding several (most) of these tracks sound a lot like Rainbow...
Except "I'll See the Light Tonight", which sounds a lot like Dio, an ex-Rainbow singer.
Malmsteen rose to fame in the 1980s, after his tenure with Alcatrazz, melodic heavy-metal band with Euro flavor, formed in Los Angeles by Graham Bonnet, after that, Malmsteen recorded a couple of solo LPs that were surprising and innovative for the metal world back in 1984 or 85, mostly because of Malmsteen's guitar technique.
On this CD, and throughout 73 minutes of music, Yngwie Malmsteen entertains us with agile finger, classical baroque-ism applied to cliched hard-rock, arpeggios, solos, pizzicati, staccati, and a style that sounds self-indulgent, dramatic, cheesy and refined at the same time, backed here by his singing puppets Jeff-Scott Soto, ex-Rainbow Joe Lynn-Turner, Mark Boals and Goran Edman, an army of bland-excellent vocalists to give some human warmth to Malmsteen's mechanical, inhuman proficiency.
But another Yngwie Malmsteen's appeal (more important to me than his speedy fingers) is (or was) his ability to create good hard-rock tunes, like the aforementioned "I'll See the Light Tonight", "Queen in Love", "Making Love", or "You Don't Remember, I'll Never Forget", title created by the rancorous Malmsteen, who appears on the cover of this selection, holding his Fender Stratocaster, and saying exactly that: "You don't remember, but I... HA! I'll never forget... ", as the respectable reader can corroborate.
Overall a good and commendable collection of melodic heavy-metal songs from the '80s, by the creator of an instantly recognizable -and imitated- style.
(rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/yngwie-malmsteen/the-yngwie-malmsteen-collection/) (death_metal_doll Jun 01 2016)