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Call me a kook, but Yngwie’s solos continue to be the least interesting facet of his music with respect to my own personal leanings. His scalloped fret-burning skills are much-heralded, a cornerstone of power metal shredding and all that, but to me, they’re something of a red herring, a McGuffin of sorts that clouds a more pertinent discussion of what he has offered for twenty-some-odd years now. What almost no one seems to discuss, for one, is his consistently excellent songwriting acumen. If he weren’t Yngwie J. Malmsteen, the alpha-omega of virtuoso blowhards, he’d be the fourth or fifth best Euro-metal songsmith in the biz. Dig rough-and-tumblers like “Revolution,” “Cracking the Whip” and “Let the Good Times Roll,” with their second-nature segues from great verse to bridge to chorus, anchored by full-range singing from the always great Dougie White (and really, another of Yngwie’s strengths is his ability to pick classic vocalists: Soto, Boals, Edman, et al.). Yngwie can even brush up against the epic-sounding without missing a step, as on the title track; its name, of course, a cheeky, winking reference to the in-flight-tantrum of Sir Malmsteen, the sound recording of which has been circulated on the net about as widely as his music. Four instrumentals is four instrumentals too many and the choruses to “Locked & Loaded” and “Beauty and a Beast” are respectively blustery and ridiculous, but there’s still a lot of good to great here. Perhaps too much for one sitting.
| Tracklist |
| 1. Locked & Loaded |
| 2. Revolution |
| 3. Winds Of War (Invasion) |
| 4. Crown Of Thorns |
| 5. The Bogeyman |
| 6. Beauty And A Beast |
| 7. Cracking The Whip |
| 8. Fuguetta |
| 9. Cherokee Warrior |
| 10. Guardian Angel |
| 11. Let The Good Times Roll |
| 12. Revelation (Drinking With The Devil) |
| 13. Magic And Mayhem (instrumental) |
| 14. Exile |
| 15. The Hunt |
| 16. Russian Roulette |
| 17. Unleash The Fury |
| 18. Paraphrase (instrumental) |
: 72:16
| Buy other Yngwie Malmsteen albums |
