Yngwie Malmsteen releases his stunning new album, Hell Or High Water, today.
To celebrate, he also revealed the official video for ‘(On The) Battlefield.’
WATCH | LISTEN
The album is out now via Music Theories Recordings / Artone Label Group.
Also check out the videos for Beyond Zeta Reticuli | Now or Never
Order/Stream the album HERE.
| Yngwie Malmsteen releases his stunning new album Hell Or High Water today via Music Theories Recordings / Artone Label Group. To celebrate, he reveals the official video for the blistering ‘(On The) Battlefield.’ For a man universally admired for his resolute tenacity and unwavering determination and commitment to his art, it could be one of the most fitting album titles he’s come up with to date. “This is just how it is with me,” the singer/guitarist shrugs, just a few days after approving the final mixes. “A handful of people look at this negatively, but the truth is they’ve had plenty of time to get used to it. I’ve always been like this. Damn the torpedoes!” He’s already released two singles from the album; the breathtaking ‘Beyond Zeta Reticuli’ is uniquely Yngwie Malmsteen. It showcases his exceptional virtuosic vision and fretboard fireworks. Zeta Reticuli is a wide binary star system located about 39.3 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Reticulum. The system is famous in science fiction as the home of LV-426 and LV-223, the fictional moons featured in films like Alien and Prometheus. However, its connection to extraterrestrials dates to the famous Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case in the 1960s. The first to be taken from the record was ‘Now or Never,’ which is a perfect storm of palm-muted riffing, baroque counterpart melodies, soaring vocals, and mind-blowing dexterity if you’re looking for Yngwie in a nutshell. When we think of the greatest guitar players of all time, specifically the crème de la crème musicians who invented a whole new style and sound on the instrument, Yngwie J. Malmsteen is a name that sits comfortably alongside game-changers like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Edward Van Halen. The nine tracks that make up his latest triumph were crafted meticulously and purposefully, away from the distractions that stall the creative process today. This is something he first tried with 2021’s Parabellum – mainly because of the state of the world at that time – and the results were so strong, he decided to stick with this as his modus operandi moving forward. And like its predecessor, Hell Or High Water sounds like an undivided, all-consuming observation by its mastermind creator. “Back when I started making records, I would just take the songs I had lying around,” he admits. “Later on, I fell into a schedule – make a record, tour the record and then write the next record. Over the pandemic, I realised it was better to focus completely uninterrupted, so I stayed at home to write this album over the course of eight months. I had around 80 or 90 tracks finished, and then I had to decide which ones were the strongest.” For a man born with a gift for conjuring overtures “out of nowhere”, the science behind writing a song is hard to explain. But, in any case, he’s grateful for the abundance of gold-standard ideas that do arrive – the kind that would take other musicians months or even years to realise into actuality. For Yngwie J. Malmsteen, this is simply what he was born to do. Hell Or High Water is an album that’s bursting with emotion from all corners, but the closing track ‘Father’ is undoubtedly the most spirited of them all, written in tribute to the guitar legend’s dad, who passed away last year. All these years on, Yngwie J. Malmsteen looks and sounds more determined than ever. If the music feels good to him, that’s enough – anyone else liking it is a bonus. This is precisely the creative fortitude and single-mindedness that turned him into a household name in the guitar community. There is no such thing as half measures or compromise in his world. Here is an artist forever bound to authenticity and creative honesty. |
