Yngwie Malmsteen – Tokyo Live: Album Review

The new Yngwie Malmsteen album, Tokyo Live. features a man who doesn’t play guitar; he assaults it. His fingers are moving so fast, Japanese customs stopped Yngwie at the airport in case he was smuggling hummingbirds under his sleeves. “Excuse me, sir, what’s that blur near your wrist?” “Oh, that’s just my E minor scale!”

Have you ever seen a bloke play guitar so fast you’re half-expecting him to vanish in a puff of smoke and reappear in 1987? That’s Yngwie for you. The Tokyo crowd wasn’t just clapping—they were desperately trying to fan the fretboard before it burst into flames and took half the venue with it.

This album has so many notes that it’s practically an encyclopedia. It’s got more movement than my nan trying to get out of a beanbag chair. Yngwie tears through Far Beyond the Sun like the sun owes him child support. The whammy bar abuse alone could qualify as a crime in several countries. I mean, even the strings are probably filing for a restraining order.

There’s this one moment in Black Star where I swear you can hear a man’s brain check out entirely. Gone. Left the building. They had paramedics on standby, handing out neck braces for all the double-takes.

His backing band should be eligible for hazard pay and a spa weekend. Keeping up with Yngwie is like trying to jog next to a rocket-powered cheetah on rollerblades.

By the end of Trilogy Suite: Vengeance, I’m convinced the man had sprouted extra fingers. Either that or he was borrowing someone else’s hands mid-song. The album really should come with a health warning: “May cause spontaneous guitar-related shame in listeners.”

Tokyo Live is like drinking five espressos, black, no sugar, and then being slapped by a Viking with a Stratocaster.
Score 8/10

CD1

1. Rising Force (Live)
2. Top Down Foot Down (Live)
3. No Rest For The Wicked (Live)
4. Soldier (Live)
5. Into Valhalla (Live)
6. Baroque & Roll (Live)
7. Like An Angel (Live)
8. Relentless Fury (Live)
9. Now Your Ships Are Burned (Live)
10. Wolves At The Door (Live)
11. Hiroshima Mon Amour (Live)
12. (Si Vis Pacem) Parabellum (Live)
13. Badinere (Live)
14. Paganini’s 4th (Live)
15. Adagio (Live)
16. Far Beyond The Sun (Live)
17. Arpeggios From Hell (Live)

CD2

1. Seventh Sign (Live)
2. Toccata (Live)
3. Evil Eye (Live)
4. Smoke On The Water (Live)
5. Trilogy-Vengeance (Live)
6. Cadenza 1 (Live)
7. Brothers (Live)
8. Fugue (Live)
9. Cadenza 2 – Grand Finale (Live)
10. You Don’t Remember I’ll Never Forget (Live)
11. Acoustic Cadenza (Live)
12. Black Star (Live)
13. I’ll See The Light Tonight (Live)