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- Genre(s): Guitar Hero
- Label: SPV Steelhammer
The album title says it all: Yngwie Malmsteen, one of the most important and influential guitarists in the history of rock music, is about to release his most recent album, Attack, on Steamhammer/SPV on September 16, 2002, leaving no doubt that he is still rightfully considered the spearhead of neoclassical rock music. Attack documents Malmsteen’s lasting and outstanding significance for the contemporary rock scene, forging a stylistic arch that links all those legendary classics that he has come up with in the more than twenty years of his career as a rock musician.
At the end of the Seventies, when the world appeared to be getting used to the exceptional achievements of great guitar legends like Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page or Ritchie Blackmore and the first signs of over-familiarity threatened to set in, Malmsteen stepped into the limelight and became a guitarist who moulded the Eighties and Nineties like few others. Born in Sweden, he was the first rock musician to play the classical scales up and down with breathtaking speed, along the lines of great violin artists like Niccoló Paganini or ingenious composers like Johann Sebastian Bach, earning enthusiastic reactions all over the world. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix and Uli Jon Roth (ex-Scorpions) in particular, Malmsteen created his very own style, which has been copied by countless emulators since. Be that as it may: Malmsteen himself has always been and will continue to be the original!
Yngwie Malmsteen was born on June 30, 1963, in Sweden. The Malmsteen family broke up soon after his birth. Watching Jimi Hendrix set light to his Stratocaster in a music programme on TV at the end of the Sixties, he made up his mind to become a rock guitarist. A few months later he started playing blues rock and formed his first band, Powerhouse, at the age of 13, rechristening it Rising one year later in honour of the same-named Rainbow album. From 1980 to 1982, he produced various instrumental demos, one of which ended up on the desk of American guitar guru, Mike Varney. Varney brought Malmsteen to the States and introduced him to Steeler, with whom he recorded an album.
Although he immediately received lucrative offers from the likes of Kiss, U.F.O. and Ozzy Osbourne, Malmsteen initially joined Alcatrazz, the band founded by former Rainbow and MSG vocalist, Graham Bonnet. This fruitful cooperation produced two albums, namely the studio recording No Parole From Rock’n’Roll and the live cut Live Sentence. Following an offer from Polydor records, the Scandinavian guitarist opted for a solo career, which was launched with the sensational Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force in 1984. The Grammy-nominated Rising Force featured, among others, the current Stratovarius keyboarder Jens Johannson, and the American Jeff Scott Soto on vocals. The band toured Europe with this line-up (including bassist Marcel Jacob and Johansson’s brother Anders on drums), leaving<
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