373. Yngwie J. Malmsteen / Facing The Animal. 1997. 2.5/5

Yngwie Malmsteen keeps churning out the albums in the hope he can find something to inspire the next generation. And sometimes as a result of this his albums can be a bit hit and miss as many of his albums through the 1990’s decade were felt to be. Well, by the time this album was about to be released, his career could be categorised by the decade they were in. With most of his previous albums from the 1990’s, all of the songs had been fairly generic, power ballads and then guitar expositions where the structure of the song barely mattered over what Yngwie was actually playing.
On the other hand, his best album in years had been the one prior to this one. Titled “Inspiration”, it was full of cover songs that Yngwie loved, by bands such as Rainbow, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and Kansas, and with several different vocalists such as Jeff Scott Soto, Joe Lynn Turner and Mark Boals, who had all been his vocalists on his best albums. So this new album was really up against it when it came to creating material that was going to better those songs and that manner of band members.
Yngwie has a history of pissing off his fellow musicians, and requiring replacements. Here on “Facing the Animal”, new lead vocalist Mats Leven is introduced, along with legendary drummer Cozy Powell to provide the backbeat. Also, for the first time, all of the writing of the songs is solely credited to Yngwie himself, something that could have been the making or the breaking of the whole project. And, in a time when Yngwie’s style of melodic hard rock and heavy metal was being overrun run by the advancing popularity of industrial metal and the like, one could only wonder if he still had a place in the music world outside of his native Europe where that style of music was still able to retain its popularity.

There’s no denying that Yngwie is a great guitarist, and his solos and licks are unmistakable. And those early albums were ground breaking in many ways. But eventually we all suspected that he would have to come to the realisation that the only people who are going to buy his albums are the ones who love his guitaring and appreciate his heavier work in song writing and his instrumentals, and not the attempts he makes at rock ballads and radio-friendly fare. At least, from my perspective, that appeared to be the best course.
Except that, once again on this album, he tries to go down that road, where radio-friendly fare as well as power ballads are the way he wants to go. The particular examples here that I am thinking of are “Alone in Paradise” and “Only the Strong”. Both are songs that turn me off his work completely. Indeed, songs like these were the reason I went over a decade from listening to any more of his new albums – which included missing this one on its release, and not picking it up until a few years later. They have a typical Yngwie solo break which is always enjoyable, but the ‘slow and mushy’ tone of the songs and lyrics really does stuff up an otherwise fair album. And you know what I’m talking about, the songs that change the momentum of the album, and really go down a path that is better left unwalked.
The tempo of this album is very different to what has come on some of the earlier work as well, mainly because of the style of Cozy Powell. There is little to no double kick, on which much of Yngwie’s best work follows. But that is not the criticism it sounds like, because Cozy’s drumming here is as powerful and enjoyable to listen to as always. It was one of his final recording moments before the tragic accident that took his life, so there is always a touch of melancholy for me listening to it. Mats Leven gives a solid performance on vocals, though this is the only studio album he appeared on.
The album is saved by songs such as “Braveheart”, “Enemy”, “My Resurrection” and the particularly excellent “Poison in My Veins”, but they don’t compare to his work in the 1980’s. And again that is not a fair comparison to make given the obvious excellence of those albums.
On a completely different note, the album can probably lay claim to having one of the worst covers of all time. It’s got to be a difficult to promote an album that has that photo as the cover art. It may as well be in the used section of old 1940’s albums that no one looks at in the second hand record stores.

As I mentioned here earlier, this album came out during the time when I had blacked out all Yngwie Malmsteen releases. The last album I had purchased of his was the “Eclipse” album back in 1990, the year he first toured Australia. Now while I had enjoyed pieces of that album, it did not inspire me to follow him any further, and it wasn’t until the “Unleash the Fury” album in 2005 that I bought another Yngwie album. And that one was well worth it, I must add. So I went back and discovered all of the albums I had missed in the preceding 15 years, to find out if they match the enjoyment I had gotten from that 2005 release. And a couple did have some good stuff on it. And the same applies to “Facing the Animal”. There are some very good songs here. Sure they may not have the ferocity and energy and passion of his earlier work, but they are enjoyable with some nice vocals and supporting guitar shredding from Yngwie.
I did initially review this for my old album review blog (still out there if you are interested in checking it out) and was fairly scathing of it at the time. And I wonder if that was still the scars of the feelings I had back in 1990 when I swore off his work. For the last two weeks I have had this going around and, while it may not be the album that is the stand out of those that are in my current listening bundle, several songs keep making themselves noticed, and the odd Yngwie guitar lick still brings music to the ears. So it isn’t as ordinary as I had thought when I first reviewed it over a decade ago. But it is the same old story, that if I am in the mood for Yngwie Malmsteen, then the albums I am generally going to reach for are from the decade of the 1980’s and not the 1990’s.