1251. Queen / The Miracle. 1989. 5/5

The career of the band Queen over the stretch of five years that preceded the release of this, their 13th studio album, truly pushed their profile and bankability as one of the biggest bands in the world to its greatest height. The great radio hits of the 1970’s had been prolific in raising the band’s profile, and the resulting lull through the change of decades had been somewhat rectified by the release of “The Works” album in 1984, the episode of which appears just a few episodes ago in this season of this podcast.
From that album’s release, Queen had soared, with the resulting world tour being massive, and then followed by their appearance at Live Aid in 1985, a set that has been coined as the greatest 20 minutes of live music in history. The band then wrote the soundtrack for the sci-fi adventure film “Highlander” which starred Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery, and produced the follow up album “A Kind of Magic”. Another world tour followed, and indeed became the final live performances of the band’s career which were commemorated with the “Live Magic” single LP, and down the track the “Live at Wembley 1986” double live album that showcased that entire performance.
Down the track this was revealed to be caused by Freddie’s illness in having contracted the AIDS virus, but at the time Freddie and the band had done a convincing job of hiding that diagnosis from the world, and of course it was not known at the time that the previous world tour would indeed be the band’s final one.
Three years was a long time between albums for the band, but on top of the long tour and Freddie’s illness, which was first diagnosed in 1987, Brian May had been going through a painful separation and subsequent divorce from his first wife, about which he had suffered feelings of failure as both a husband and father. While the band had begun the writing process for their new album in January of 1988, the process of writing and then recording eventually took up the whole of the next 12 months. It was also the first time that a Queen album had all of the songs credited to the band as a whole, rather than the individuals who were the composers. Given the collaboration that was always a part of their songwriting, it did seem as though it was a fair way of not only crediting all four members for their art, but sharing the song writing royalties.

Like all Queen albums, this really is a journey, where the music moves from different styles and genres all the way through, incorporating all four members and their contributions musically, in composition and vocally. As the band reached the end of the 80’s decade, there is a smooth combination of all of the band’s strengths instrumentally – the guitars, drums and piano/keyboards. Add to this great songs lyrically, and then sung as amazingly as always, and you have the basis of a great album.
The opening two tracks more or less meld together to make one song. The opening of “Party” sounds exactly like that, from Freddie’s opening spiel into Brian’s electrifying guitar riffs, John’s jutting bassline and Roger’s drumbeat, you can see in your mind the party going on as the band plays along. And as the song, and the party, winds down, suddenly we segue straight into the second track “Khashoggi’s Ship”, where ‘no one stops my party’, and the journey continues onward. It is a terrific energetic opening to the album. Then comes the less outlandish and more down to earth sound of the title track, “The Miracle”, certainly one of the most profound, beautiful and amazing songs from the band’s catalogue, and showcases the best of the Mercury/Deacon writing partnership. Lyrically it takes its own journey, poignant and heartfelt, strong and uplifting, a positive spin on everything that the world has to offer, before breaking out in a musical cacophony towards the end of the track. Just to quote the whole song is to read a list of what the world should be like – “We’re having a miracle on earth, Mother Nature does it all for us” – “If every child on every street, had clothes to wear and food to eat” – “If all God’s people could be free, to live in perfect harmony” – and most telling, “The one thing we’re all waiting for, is peace on earth, and an end to war”. This song is a masterpiece, one of Queen’s defining moments. I love how Brian May has been quoted as saying it is one of his favourite songs.
This is then followed by “I Want it All” which is quite simply one of the best songs ever written. It’s an anthem, an inspirational song on a musical level as well as a lyrical level. A Brian May blockbuster, with that guitar riff and drum beat at the very forefront of the track. Freddie’s vocals here are supreme, and I love the shared moments with Brian in the middle break. But then there is that middle solo section, where everything is contributing to the brilliance of what comes out. Yes, it is Brian’s amazing guitar solo, perfectly nuanced all the way through, but Roger’s drumming in this piece is also the element that is driving it, galloping the song along with its beat (apparently the only time he ever used a double kick drum), and then John’s superb bassline, jutting at the start, before running up and down the fretboard in the middle of the section – it truly is one of the best solo sections of any Queen song.
The magnificence of “The Invisible Man” follows, with great motion throughout and the rise and surge of the music and vocals along the way. The combination of Roger’s vocals alongside Freddie is terrific, as is the name checking of each of the four members of the band.
Side Two of the album opens with “Breakthru”, the song that sounds so much like a train rumbling down the tracks that the video for the song incorporated exactly that. As someone who generally despises love songs… this is the greatest love song ever written. Once again the lyrics speak for themselves – “I wake up, I feel just fine, you’re face fills my mind” – “Make my feelings known towards you, turn my heart inside and out for you now” – “Honey, you're sparking something, this fire in me, I'm outta control, I wanna rush headlong into this ecstasy” – and of course, “If I could only reach you, If I could make you smile, If I could only reach you, That would really be a breakthrough”.
“Rain Must Fall” has a very Latin sound about it, and is very much a change from the songs that have come before it, something the Mercury/Deacon compositions have a way of doing. Then comes “Scandal”, the scathing attack by Brian on the scathing attacks the media made on him during his divorce and subsequent relationship. Freddie creates a lot of emotion in his vocals in the way he sings this song, really driving home just how Brian must have felt at this time, and to me it has always acted as a marvellous tribute by Freddie to his bandmate in the way that he emotes while performing it. And, by the way, makes it a stunning track. This emotion is brought back in by “My Baby Does Me”, another Mercury/Deacon track that reels in the tempo and utilises and almost R&B sound to the song. The album then concludes with the majestic “Was it All Worth It”, a song constructed by Mercury, and when listening to the lyrics seems like an early epitaph. Freddie was obviously aware of his diagnosis when he wrote the lyrics, and though it can be read as simply a song that looks back on the bands career, and the work they had put in over the years, and asking the question was it all worth it… you can’t help but think that perhaps Freddie was also exploring his own mortality as the song was being written.

The Queen of the 1980’s is my band. “The Works”, “A Kind of Magic”, “The Miracle”. These are the albums that created my love of the band, and no matter how much I love their entire catalogue, it is these three albums that is where my heart still resides. Each is different, each has its own charms and foibles, and yet each to me are basically perfect albums. Each had their moment to imprint themselves upon me. “The Works” did so with the radio airplay the singles received. “A Kind of Magic” did so through the movie “Highlander” that it acted as a soundtrack for. “The Miracle” did in a different way. It was one of the albums released at this time that was not the focus of thrash and heavy metal that I was so indulgent with during 1989. This album acted as one that could be listened to in all company, and it was. For the remainder of 1989 from May onwards, and into the next year, my three closest friends at the time and I would go on car trips to Sydney, just under two hours drive from where we lived, once a month on a Friday. We all found a way to either get out of work or avoid uni, and go to Sydney for the day, almost always in the same friend’s car. During this time, he had purchased “The Miracle” on cassette so we could listen to it in the car. Thing was, at some stage, the cassette got stuck, and so it was the ONLY album that we could listen to, inn his car, on these trips. So, we listened to this album, much as Freddie sings in “Scandal”, ‘over and over and over and over again’. So, I can assure you we knew every word of every song. Great times and great memories. And it was a good thing we loved this album, and that another album wasn’t the one that got caught in there, like the rubbish dance music he also liked at the time, such as New Order or Pet Shop Boys. Ugh.
I bought this album on vinyl on one of those Sydney trips, at Utopia Records in Sydney, not long after its release, and was enamoured with it from the start. Actually, I fell in love with it. The constant playing of the album in the car on any road trip was amplified by the number of times I listened to it at home, and the number of times I played air guitar on “I Want it All”. As with all Queen albums, the differences between each of the songs came with the writers involved, even if they didn’t actually have their name credited against it.
The other major memory I have of this album was later in 1989, prior to going out to bat in a cricket match where we were chasing a large total. I sat in my car for an hour before I was required to bat, listening to “I Want it All”, then fast forwarding to “Breakthru”, and then back. Just those two songs, over and over. Nerves were expunged, and I went out that day and scored my highest score in top grade cricket, and we won the game. Coincidence? Unlikely. Those two songs in particular are anthemic, and great motivators. For me, on that day, they did exactly that.
“The Miracle” was the soundtrack to my life for the second half of 1989, as my life changed from under-performing university student to first full time job, and also being asked to join my first band, where I could parley my love of music into... something that resembled playing music. All of these memories flood back to me every time I put this album on. Some are great, some are not, but one thing that never changes is my love of this album. One of the very great things I have ever had the pleasure of buying and listening to.

1250. Alcatrazz / Live Sentence. 1984. 3.5/5

Alcatrazz as a band came together not long after lead singer Graham Bonnet was dismissed from the Michael Schenker Group, which had come not long after his dismissal from Rainbow. The initial line up of the band, with Bonnet alongside guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, bass guitarist Gary Shea, keyboardist Jimmy Waldo and drummer Jan Uvena, had released their debut album “No Parole from Rock and Roll” in October 1983, the episode of which you can hear in Season 5 of this podcast.
On the back of this album the band toured extensively through the US and Europe, along with Japan, where the band’s song "Hiroshima Mon Amour" had become popular. This had led to the band deciding to record the concerts that they performed at the Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo on January 28 of 1984, with the intention to release a live recording to showcase what the band could do in a live setting. When they listened to the tapes on playback, Yngwie Malmsteen was particularly unhappy with the quality of the recordings and fought hard to prevent them being released as an album. He failed in his efforts, which just added to the list of grievances that he had been having with the band and in particular Graham Bonnet himself. The resulting album was then released less than three months after the concert had been played, and as a play on words of the name of the band was titled “Live Sentence”

The original release of the live album had nine tracks, four of which came from the band’s debut studio album. The double A-side single “Island in the Sun” which gained the band popularity in Japan because of the song “Hiroshima Mon Amour” attached to it has both songs on this album, and both do sound better here in the live environment than on their studio versions. Bonnet’s vocals especially on “Hiroshima on Amour” are fantastic and showcase what a terrific voice he does have. The old man youth anthem of “Too Young to Die, Too Drunk to Live” (or perhaps it’s just a Bonnet autobiographical song) opens up the album here and gets the energy flowing from the outset. And the final of those four tracks is “Kree Nakoorie” which opens up side two of the album, and again translates well to the live environment.
This left more than half of the album filled with songs that weren’t by the band themselves, which seems strange even in an environment where with only one studio album having been released it would have necessitated bringing in songs from the outside. “Night Games” came from Bonnet’s third solo album, released after his short stint with Rainbow. This single had reached number six in the UK on its release, so acts as a track that some fans at least would have recognised. Speaking of Rainbow, two of the songs from Bonnet’s album with that band are also featured here, the two singles released from that band’s “Down to Earth” album “Since You Been Gone” and “All Night Long”. One assumes this would have appeased Malmsteen as well as he was such a Ritchie Blackmore fan, and listening to him playing guitar on both these tracks you can tell he is ecstatic at the prospect. The other two tracks are down to Malmsteen himself, soloing on a track simply called “Coming Bach” which has a popular and well known tune from the famous composer, and “Evil Eye”, an instrumental song written by Yngwie here, that eventually also showed up on his debut studio album “Rising Force” later that year, and became one of his signature pieces.
The 2016 remastered edition of the album contains the whole setlist and the track list is restored to the concert running order, and includes other tracks from the debut album in “Big Foot” and “Suffer Me”, along with the brilliant Michael Schenker Group song “Desert Song” and another Rainbow song in “Lost in Hollywood”. If you were indeed to wish to buy the album, this would be the version to hunt down, as it also contains a DVD of the performance.
Throughout the album, the band sounds fine, but the dominating factors are Graham Bonnet’s vocals and Yngwie Malmsteen’s guitaring. Both are just amazing on every song, and it is unfortunate that the two of them couldn’t find a way to work together longer, as their combination is truly something worth listening to.

Having come across Alcatrazz at the end of the 1980’s, essentially through the names Graham Bonnet and Yngwie Malmsteen, I have always found them to be a band that has all the ability in the world, but for the most part their albums fell short of what I expected, or at least what I was hoping for. Let’s face it, both characters named here have been known for their volatile natures, and neither can seem to hold a place down in a band for longer than one or two albums at most. In this case Yngwie lasted one, before striking out on his own with his Rising Force solo project, where he still seems to be unable to retain a solid band around himself, but at least he is in charge of the hiring and firing. Bonnet’s previous history and litany of bands is well known, and would continue beyond this album and band.
And yet, as I always say when it comes to a live album, it should be a highly rated album, as it contains all of the band’s best songs, in their best environment. And that certainly occurs here. And even if you are a little ambivalent about the band’s debut album, what you do get here is those songs energetically performed live, surrounded by a host of other great tracks from Bonnet’s other bands, and some Malmsteen composed acoustic songs where he showcases all of his guitaring talents.
While I have listened to this album in the past, it has never really been with wholehearted interest. It comes up next in the rotation, and I have shrugged my shoulders and let it run. So when it came around to review for this podcast, I put it on and thought, ‘well, if it isn’t very good, perhaps I’ll just skip it’. Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, I’ve had it running for over two weeks, at least once a day in that time period, and have found it most enjoyable. And yes, it is for Bonnet’s amazing vocals, and every magical Malmsteen guitaring moment. Both are hard to ignore, and both have been terrific. If you are a fan of either, then I would suggest you grab this and have a listen, if only to experience this era of the two main conspirators. If you aren’t a fan of these two... then I’m sure you’ve already decided that this podcast episode will suffice for you ever having to track the album down.

1249. Badlands / Badlands. 1989. 4/5

Looking back on the recent history of the members of Badlands before the band had even come to exist, it’s amazing that all four members of the band were available to come together in this project in the first place. That is perhaps more so the case for iconic guitarist Jake E. Lee, who had spent the previous five years in Ozzy Osborne’s band and had been an intricate part of that band. He played on two amazing albums in “Bark at the Moon” and “The Ultimate Sin” and had been hands on with the writing of all of the songs involved, even if the credit wasn’t necessarily given to him at that time. And then, following the tour after “The Ultimate Sin” album, he was unceremoniously fired from the band, without any reason given, though it was pretty obvious that Jake’s constant fight to be given the writing credits he deserved for what he had done on those two albums is what eventually led to Sharon Osbourne issuing his notice. The fact that Jake found this out from his guitar tech and roommate is even more amazing. He was not the first nor the last to get this treatment from the Osbourne camp.
This led to Jake deciding to start up his own band, and his first stop was to find a lead vocalist who could not only perform vocally but also charismatically on stage. It eventually led him to come to Ray Gillen, who had been through his own journey in that time period. Gillen had come in to the 80’s version of Black Sabbath, replacing Glenn Hughes who had sung on the “Seventh Star” album for the tour that followed, and had then begun to write and record songs for the album that eventually became “The Eternal Idol”. Through problems that arose with, amongst others, Gillen being unable to contribute effectively to the writing process, which necessitated Bob Daisley being brought in to help reassess the writing of the album, the process of writing and recording was a mess, and eventually with both Gillen and drummer Eric Singer quit the band prior to the album’s release. It eventually was re-recorded completely with Tony Marton on vocals. Something similar happened with his next band, when Gillen joined John Sykes and Blue Murder as vocalist, but was again let go following singing on demos for the album, also due to difficulties in writing. That story can be heard on the episode recently released for that debut Blue Murder album. Given his problems in just those two projects, it’s interesting that Jake took Gillen on in this project. It is my opinion that vocally at least, Gillen would have improved Blue Murder as a band.
To complete the band, both Jake and Ray brought in musicians they had recently been playing with. Ray recruited Eric Singer to play drums, with whom he had been involved in Black Sabbath, while Jake brought in Greg Chaisson, who he had initially met during auditions for Ozzy’s band. With the foursome complete, it was time for the band that had been brought together to pull together their debut album, the self-titled “Badlands”.

The opening two tracks of the album are the money shots and are the ones that have forever since been Exhibit A and Exhibit B as to why this band should have been in the superstar class. “High Wire” is a great opening track, showcasing all four members doing their job at the highest class imaginable. This is followed by the single “Dreams in the Dark” where Ray’s vocals ramp up, and Jake’s guitar has a very ‘ultimate sin’ sound about it during the solo. These two songs have always been the ones that I would play to people to convince them that Badlands is a very good band and a very impressive album, but the remainder has to also be very good if it is to live up to the opening.
“Jade’s Song” is an instrumental that comes after the opening two tracks on the album, quiet and reserved, written by Jake and showcasing the other side of his guitaring talent.
“Winter’s Call” starts off in the same fashion, segueing from that quiet perspective with Ray singing gently over the top, before the track bursts into action, with its heavy blues base emphasises by Ray’s top notch vocals.
“Dancing on the Edge” is arguably the hardest song on the album, moving along at a fast clip and Ray singing hard with gusto. Jake’s guitaring here again does feel as though it surpasses what he did in his previous band, which is a big call, but that’s how terrific it is. The same can be said of “Hard Driver”, another fast paced track that combines the brilliant bass lines of Chaisson with Jake’s outstanding guitar to drive this song throughout. These are both sensational songs that almost no one seems to know, and that seems like a crime. They are split on the album by the excellent “Streets Cry Freedom” which starts off in a mid tempo range before changing up to bring home the second half of the song with a faster energy.
OK, so “Rumblin’ Train” does dive back into that blues sound, something that seems like a slight letdown considering the songs that have come before it. It’s a stock standard blues rock song, that’s probably all you need to know. “Devil’s Stomp” runs a similar agenda that “Streets Cry Freedom” does with the slower start to the song before it breaks out at the two minute mark with a hard core guitar riff and Ray’s killer vocals stealing the song. Another awesome track on the album. The album then concludes with “Seasons”, which, if I am going to get picky (and I am) is the wrong tempo for a closing track. Nothing wrong with looking for an epic finish to the album, but at least ramp it up a bit in doing so. It’s not a bad song, just not as good as others on this album.
All through this album, it is important to note that all four members of the band are superb. Eric Singer’s drumming, as he was becoming renown for by this stage of his career, is fantastic. Hard hitting, giving those 4/4 and 2/4 beats everything as the signature power of the band. In the same way as Cozy Powell was doing through the decade, Eric was laying his stamp over the albums he played on, and this is no different. Greg Chaisson’s bass lines are just wonderful, providing the core base that allows Jake to play his guitar the way he does, without the music losing any of its depth and power. It is a great performance. And as you will already have guessed, Jake and Ray’s efforts here are platinum. Jake’s guitaring is just superb, and showing that he certainly wasn’t let go from his previous band because of his skills, while Ray’s vocals are supreme, channelling Tony Martin and Ronnie Dio and playing an integral part in making this album as good as it is.

Given the quality of the personnel in the band, it was pretty hard to go past buying this album when it was first released. It had been given a reasonable amount of exposure in Australia’s ‘Hot Metal’ magazine at the time, and having loved both of Ozzy’s previous two albums that had Jake E. Lee on guitar especially, I leapt at this when it finally hit the record stores. I bought it on vinyl from Utopia Records, and played it a lot. I taped it on cassette and had it in the car. And overall I thought it was… pretty good! It didn’t all gel with what I was listening to at the time, and perhaps that slight bias against the blues side of the rock on offer was a part of that. My overriding memories of that time was that it was a really good album but not one I could play in front of other albums released at the time.
On the occasional listens I gave to it after that I found more enjoyment, probably due to that slight bias having retreated after those end of teenage years. Tragedy occurred in 2001 when a flood destroyed all of my vinyl albums, including this one, which given the inability to find this on physical media in the modern age is even more distressing. And have you tried to find this on a streaming service? Also impossible. YouTube is your best bet, though for me my mp3 version is still my best friend.
So when it came to this anniversary coming up, I began listening to it once again. And I found out just how good it is again. It’s a crime that this album isn’t better known in the modern age. Those amazing vocals of Ray Gillen, that blazing guitar from Jake E. Lee, that combination is still fantastic to this day.
Unfortunately, the curse of Ray Gillen’s bands continued down the track. The tensions between Gillen and Lee ramped up during the tour to support the album, and into the writing for the follow up. Gillen was eventually fired during the tour for that album, which had come a year after his initial diagnosis for AIDS. That tragic end… is for another episode down the track.
In the end, this debut album is one that for a short space of time lit up the airwaves and the metal magazines, and if the music gods had aligned in the right way, would have been the first of many more terrific albums from a great lineup. That didn’t happen, but you can still enjoy the short burst of joy that we did receive.

1248. Yngwie Malmsteen / The Seventh Sign. 1994. 3/5

The career of Yngwie Malmsteen as we reached the middle years of the 90’s decade had seen the extreme highs of playing to sold out crowds around the world and seeing his music videos plastered all over music programs across the globe, and posters of himself being pinned up in bedrooms everywhere. As a guitarist he was considered one of the best, one of the main influences and purveyors of the instrument in the modern age, and with good reason. He had a solo career with albums that were the envy of other musicians, showcasing not only his amazing guitar skills on these songs but an ability to write songs that were also catchy enough to make an impression on the charts, which was something that he had strived for over a long period of time.
The end of the 1980’s decade had seen four masterful solo albums and a live album and video to match, and it appeared that he was trending upward in every respect. The 1990’s however didn’t quite work out the way that he had hoped, with the advent of grunge and alternative music putting a big hole through his fan base. In the US especially this genre of music was sucking the life out of every other pursuit, including guitar gods who specialised in neo-classical guitar riffing and the power ballad in particular. The two albums Yngwie released in the 1990’s with new vocalist Goran Edman, “Eclipse” and “Fire and Ice”, were still popular, but trended down on the success that his initial albums had produced. And while the US and to a lesser extent the UK was moving away from his style of guitar and synth based music, it was Japan and Europe that continued to fly the flag for this style, and it found Yngwie retreating into their territory as the safe haven that his music required, where he could still retain his popularity without having to compromise to what was occurring elsewhere in the music world. It meant that his albums through the 1990’s were generally only released in Japan and Europe, something that probably did affect sales elsewhere in the world, but to what extent will never really be known.

It does take a special person to want to go out and buy every Yngwie Malmsteen album. There is a penchant for the song structures to become very similar throughout, a trend that really only started from the “Odyssey” album onwards.
This album, unlike most of the albums up to this point in time in the Malmsteen catalogue, does have what I consider to be three clearly defined sections when it comes to the type of songs produced. Michael Vescera, the new vocalist on this album following the release of Edman, has contributed lyrics to three songs on the album, and they strike out at you immediately. All three tracks have a different structure and are sung in a very different way. For instance, “I Don’t Know” has the sort of lyrics and vocals that are aimed at the audience the band is trying to attract. The fast double kick drum has gone and is replaced with a much harder rock hammering 4/4 timing, and the vocals are the hard rock standard as well, not soaring or screaming, but just at you in an almost conversational way. “Bad Blood” and “Crash and Burn” have the same tempo as this, completely different from what you would usually expect. Did Vescera take on these particular tracks to contribute to deliberately? It’s an interesting overview, that his lyrical writing came on the three songs that have this same style.
Beyond these tracks, we have the tracks penned entirely by Malmsteen himself which as always have his two usual styles coming at you – the fast paced guitar/synth based power metal that is punctuated by his amazing solo pieces that are the real reason we all come to listen to a Yngwie Malmsteen album, and then the power ballad slower tracks where he tries to suck us in to believing he could be a popular commercial success.
The former styled songs such as the opening track “Never Die”, “Hairtrigger”, the excellent title track “Seventh Sign” and “Pyramid of Cheops” which are the more immediately enjoyable, with the faster pace, backed by Yngwie’s great guitar riffing and solid harder styled vocals from Vescera that make the journey a far more enjoyable one. “Pyramid of Cheops” is certainly the heaviest song on the album, with a real driving beat and moody tempo that defies what Yngwie usually offers on his albums.
The other style is highlighted by songs such as “Meant to Be” and “Forever One” that drag out into infinity with the ballad vocals and Yngwie’s classical-styled guitar that is able to be appreciated for its intricacy but perhaps not loved for its output. “Prisoner of Your Love” in particular is extraordinarily painful, and yes, awful. With lyrics composed by Yngwie’s then wife Amberdawn, it is just the kind of track that should be thrown away in post-production or assigned as a last-minute bonus track to the Japanese release if at all. Yngwie also has two of his instrumental pieces here, “Brothers” and the closing track “Sorrow”, which as always hark back to his earliest work, though without the real originality that those songs and albums contain.

I loved all of Yngwie’s first four albums. His debut album was actually one of the first albums that I bought on CD when I first got my stereo with a CD player on it, and it was played a lot as a result. And I first got to see Yngwie live at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on the Eclipse Tour, which was amazing.
It was the “Eclipse” album that I felt things started to turn for Yngwie, and the commercialisation that he was looking for at that time changed my perception of his music. When “Fire and Ice” followed and was in a similar ilk, I moved away from his music for about a decade, as other music genres and bands began to take a precedence over what I perceived to be Yngwie’s obsession.
A decade later, and in a different period of my life, and I decided to go back in time, and check out what the maestro had been doing over that period, and on the back of what I considered two very good albums at the turn of the century, I also went in to check out exactly what this album was like. And though there had been a change in personnel since I had last heard him, my ears were still biased against what he was producing here. I enjoy a few of the tracks, but overall I wasn’t amazed by the output. I thought Michael Vescera had a good sounding voice, but without the amount of amazing guitar work that Yngwie had always inserted into his earliest work, it didn’t grab me enough to really push forward.
Another two decades later, and I am once again revisiting this album. And it would be fair to say that if I wasn’t doing this podcast I very probably may never have listened to this album again. But I have, and I’m glad I have. Over a number of weeks, I have now listened to this album many times more than I have in the previous 30 years, and while this still has many flaws that would make it very difficult for it to be on a listening rotation with me, I’ve grown to enjoy it far more than I ever have. It’s still obvious that Yngwie at this time was still looking for a commercial success that had well and truly passed him by at this stage of his career, and was still not utilising his guitar enough. But there are some good moments here, and if you have it tracking in the background while you are pottering around the house or at work, then there is enough here to catch your attention along the way. It will never be one that I grab off the shelves when I want to listen to a Yngwie Malmsteen album. And there is now every chance that given this episode is almost over, I may never listen to it again. That in itself is perhaps the most incisive review I could offer you on just how engaging “The Seventh Sign” is.