{"id":4090,"date":"1988-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1988-06-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=4090"},"modified":"2013-06-01T12:50:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T12:50:17","slug":"album-review-yngwie-malmsteen-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-yngwie-malmsteen-odyssey\/","title":{"rendered":"YNGWIE MALMSTEEN – Odyssey (1988) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

YNGWIE MALMSTEEN
Odyssey<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nPolydor (1988)<\/span>
Rating: 6.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Probably the most interesting and least known fact about this album is that Joe Lynn Turner wears a wig. Bet you didn\u2019t know that ay boys and girls? Well, although there may not be as much hair here as it may at first appear, there are quite a few hairy moments to grab the attention, mainly when Inky sprints hell for leather down his guitar neck.<\/p>\n

Yes, it may be in a more commercial format, but Yngwie\u2019s playing dominates in as much the same fashion as it did the earlier Rising Force<\/em> recordings. And while we\u2019re on the subject of Malmsteen\u2019s pre-pubescent doodlings on guitar, how come there is so much archive material bolstering the newer numbers? The original version of \u2018Far Beyond The Sun\u2019 (a totally different song, with lyrics, that appeared on his initial 1980 demos) resurfaces as the main theme for \u2018Krakatau\u2019, and \u2018Riot In The Dungeons\u2019 must be of similar age. For a new album, this smells pretty old to me with old riffs rising Frankenstein-like from the dead.<\/p>\n

There are a brace of nifty numbers onboard however which are recent compositions; the driving urgency of \u2018D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu\u2019 being one of the better examples, and with \u2018Crystal Ball\u2019 avoiding any \u2018I Am A Viking\u2019 absurdities to benefit from an inspired vocal melody from the chap with half a cat on his head.<\/p>\n

Jens and Anders Johansson supply their usual faultless performance, highly underrated these two, on an album which sees Yngwie taking note from his critics who constantly nag the man to pursue a far more \u201cpop\u201d career. Personally, I prefer the massive explosion of sound that was the debut Rising Force<\/em> album to this blatant stab at general acceptance.<\/p>\n

Detracting from the generally higher quality songs is ol\u2019 Yngwie himself. His solos, though technically top notch, are ominously sequestered by anything new and exciting. There\u2019s even a straight Jimi Hendrix take off to illustrate this point; maybe Malmsteen\u2019s well of inspiration has run dry?<\/p>\n

Ostensibly, Yngwie is targeting radio play as opposed to guitar histrionics, but I wonder how far he can go in this lucrative direction while hanging onto his obsession for speed.<\/p>\n

A good album, but not quite deserving of the \u201call time classic\u201d tag most magazines appear to hang quite happily around its neck. I tried to think of something witty to round off with on the subject of wigs, but I\u2019m afraid, unlike Joe, I haven\u2019t got my thinking cap on today!<\/p>\n

Garry Sharpe-Young<\/strong><\/p>\n

Review taken from Metal Forces, Issue 28 (1988)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YNGWIE MALMSTEENOdyssey Polydor (1988)Rating: 6.5\/10 Probably the most interesting and least known fact about this album is that Joe Lynn Turner wears a wig. Bet you didn\u2019t know that ay boys and girls? Well, although there may not be as much hair here as it may at first appear, there are quite a few hairy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yngwie-malmsteen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4090"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11874,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions\/11874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}