SilentScream213 Yngwie’s sophomore solo album is much more traditionally structured like a regular album, with almost every song featuring vocals (strong vocals at that) and the improvised noodling is kept to a minimum. Depending on your taste, that can be a plus or a minus, but for me it’s a huge plus. Yngwie works best as support – he writes fantastic riffs, and his solos are excellent in small doses, rather than dedicating entire songs to him improvising. Although far from pop songs, the vocals feature some fantastically catchy choruses, and though the songs delve into anthemic arena rock territory, Yngwie keeps it interesting by ensuring the backing riffs are as technical and engaging as ever.

Definitely an improvement over the debut in my opinion, which was impressive but occasionally boring.

SouthSideoftheSky Please let it end!

After the groundbreaking and excellent debut came this disappointing album. While the debut was mostly instrumental and quite unconventional and progressive, Marching Out is mostly non-instrumental and rather conventional in nature. Indeed, songs like I’ll See The Light Tonight and Don’t Let It End have a commercial sound and comes uncomfortably close to Pop Metal territory. The worst part of the whole thing is the lyrics, which are weak at best and cheesy at worst. I Am A Viking is a good case in point! Sure you are, Yngwie!

There are, however, moments of brilliance also on this album and these moments are primarily the instrumental tracks and the instrumental sections in the vocal tracks. The excellent keyboard solos of Jens Johansson that were such an important part of the debut are much fewer, much shorter and much farther in between here. Also, though often good, the guitar/keyboard duels between Yngwie and Johansson add nothing new to what they already did on the debut.

Overall, I would say that the second side of the album is stronger than the first side; Overture 1383, Anguish And Fear and the instrumental title track are all good songs.

Do my no means begin here!

Tritone A magnificent second part

After a masterly debut with "RIsing Force", Ygnwie comes back to the attack with another wonderful but very different album. Here, the role of the instrumental themes has turned inside out with only two ones, having voice the rest of the album. We have again Jeff Scott Soto on voice, with much more prominence now; and Jens Johansson on keyboards. On the bass, now we find the virtuoso swedish player Marcel Jacob, that would found years later Talisman beside Jeff. The other incorporation is Ander Johansson on drums, the brother of Jens, that would stay several years in the band. Once again, Yngwie would take charge of composing, producing, mixing and arrangements.

The sound in this album is much more sharpened and heavy than in the fisrt one, but still including classical guitars and acoustic keyboards here and there, resulting in a metal style absolutly loud but full of musicianship, virtuoso playing and beautiful melodies. As well as in the first album, Yngwie here continued showing the path for a lot of metal bands in tyhe future.

Despite being wondewrful the whole album, if I have to choose some theme, I'd choose the two instrumental little jewels: "Overture 1383" and "Marching Out", and maybe "Don't Let It End".