Search - Yngwie Malmsteen :: Inspiration

If You LIke The Originals Then You'll Enjoy Yngwie's Covers

L. Bloom | Hollywood | 12/03/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Inspiration is an album of cover versions of Deep Purple, Hendrix, Kansas, Rainbow, Uli Jon Roth and Alan Holdsworth. Regardless of what you've heard, this album is great - not a dud on the whole album. The critics whined, but we ignored them then and we will ignore them now. Most of the criticism aimed at Yngwie is prejudicial anyway. There is nothing wrong with the way that Yngwie plays - all guitar heros have their trademarks and Yngwie is no exception. If you like the original versions of these songs then you'll probably like Yngwie's versions of them. Most of them are faithful to the originals except of course for the solos. Ynwgie is a top notch, well-respected guitarist in his field. Yngwie is making music for the guitar players out there not the MTV burn outs. He clearly has an incredible technique which he displays frequently. I recommend this album along side of any of his others and maybe even above some. It also places Yngwie in the same category as his influences. Guitar players will have a field day figuring out the solos and others may simply just enjoy some inspired covers of some forgotten or nearly forgotten classics. Well done."

An open window to this artists tastes

Paul Lawrence | Australia | 08/20/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"While it would be easy to call this a stopgap release somehow I doubt it, it's not the sort of thing Yngwie does. At the time he put out Live in Leningrad some people tried to accuse him of stopgap measures but he countered with the comment that he had 30 tunes written at his home. He's certainly prolific within his idiom so I'm inclined to take this at face value, that it was a project intended for fun and for the fans. Basically if your not a fan of Yngwie this collection of tunes will be of limited appeal to you but for fans or the adventurous then it's pretty cool.



This disc sees Yngwie in good form. Coming off the back of his Magnum Opus album, perhaps his best for some time, the man is brimming with confidence and zeal, laying down great solo after great solo. And the various vocalists also rise to the occasion. Having a range of vocalists on this disc was a risk, there was always the chance that the album would come across as fragmented but somehow this hasn't occurred. In fact it's brought about a cool vibe that imples people had fun making this album.



Listening to this disc one last time to refresh my mind as to it's attributes I couldn't help recalling the review of this album in Metal Edge which made a number of pertinent points. One was that the production was teflon coated and that secondly, with three tunes penned or co-penned by Ritchie Blackmore what was Yngwie going to do to Blackmore next? Take up stalking?



All jokes aside this is a great album to pick up if your a fan of Yngwie, flipping through the liner notes where he thanks people for introducing him to different songs or writing them in the first place is a nice touch. And the admittedly teflon coated production job is also pretty good. Though purists ad older rockers may check out the track listing and cry sacrilege, my opinion is to just jump in and enjoy a guy giving an honest rendition in his own style of tunes that inspired him or that he loves. And importantly at the time this album came out many of hte classic bands who wrote these tunes were totally uncool, it's not as if Yngwie picked songs by then popular artists and claimed to like them (a la Slayers punk covers album), you can feel this is where his hearts really at."