Yngwie J. Malmsteen - Fire & Ice (1992)^{Release ID: 7320}

I like this album. I don't love this album. When he goes all out with his guitar you can call it metal, otherwise this is glam rock at most. I don't mind his singing here, but if it wasn't for those special riffs this would just fall in this mix of late 80's early 90's rock. Looking again at the release year of '92 I realize this is a bit late where so many other bands have already been doing this hard rock with explosive riffs that this just doesn't hit the mark that's already been done so it's nothing as new and aww inspirings as his debut Trilogy which I should give another spin for reference. This is just solid, good, above average Yngwie. I won't remember anything on this but it is by no means bad, just unremarkable amongst a sea of other neoclassical metal.

I just wrote a full review of this album & then accidently deleted it so I'm not gonna go through the lengthy process again. Let's just say that "Fire & Ice" is an underrated release that saw Yngwie returning to some level of form after 1990's disappointing "Eclipse" album. The clear highlights are the two wonderful neoclassical metal instrumentals "Perpetual" & "Leviathan" which manage to balance out the three or four duds amongst the fourteen song tracklisting very well. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Yngwie well & truly puts competitors like Cacophony, Jason Becker & Michael Angelo Batio back in their boxes with those because no one can touch him when he decides to get his dark & exotic leather pants on & these two tracks are the absolute peak of the niche genre for mine.

The album jumps around quite a bit stylistically which keeps you on your toes with hard rock, heavy metal, power metal & even glam metal, classical music & symphonic metal getting the odd airing. The semi-regular use of bridges that go full-throttle down a cheesy classical music hole is something I could do without but the more sporadic use of keyboard solos & the wonderfully capable vocals of Göran Edman (Madison/Time Requiem/Vinnie Vincent Invasion) certainly do no harm whatsoever. Was Yngwie simply repeating himself by this stage? Yeah, there's no doubt that he was but I'd actually take "Fire & Ice" over 1986's much more popular "Trilogy" album if I'm being honest so it's far from the misfire people seem to claim it to be these days.