Yngwie Malmsteen announces new album Hell or High Water

Guitar legend Yngwie Malmsteen has announced his new studio album: Hell or High Water will be released on 13 November via Music Theories Recordings and Artone Label Group. It is the first record from the Swedish guitar virtuoso in nearly five years, making the gap between this album and its predecessor, Parabellum from 2021, the longest of his more than forty year career.

To mark the announcement, Malmsteen has also released the lead single. Now or Never is not an unbridled barrage of shredding but a melodic and disciplined track built on a solid heavy metal riff, with baroque counter melodies and strong vocal performances from the guitarist himself. Anyone familiar with his early work in bands like Steeler and Alcatrazz will recognise the characteristic combination of technical skill and musical taste that made him a legend back then.

The nine tracks on the album were carefully selected from a much larger pool of material. Malmsteen explains his process: "When I started making records, I would just take the songs I had lying around. Later on, I fell into a schedule, make a record, tour the record and then write the next record. Over the pandemic, I realised it was better to focus completely uninterrupted, so I stayed at home to write this album over the course of eight months. I had around 80 or 90 tracks finished, and then I had to decide which ones were the strongest." Malmsteen also mentioned earlier this year that he deliberately designed the album to fit on vinyl: nine tracks with a runtime of 46 minutes.

Alongside Now or Never and the instrumental Am Caprice/Hell or High Water, the record features tracks such as (On The) Battlefield and Eye for an Eye, on which Malmsteen reportedly delivers his strongest vocal performances to date. The instrumental tracks Antikythera and Beyond Zeta Reticuli are named after scientific discoveries and breakthroughs.

The most personal moment on the album is the closing track Father, written in memory of Malmsteen's father, who passed away last year. "He was an amazing man," says Malmsteen. "I was proud to have him as a father, and I loved him. I wanted to dedicate all of this to him, and that one particular track is for him. I wanted others to feel what I felt when they hear it. Niccolò Paganini once said, 'One must feel strongly in order to make others feel strongly'. It's one thing to be a typewriter and another thing to be someone who writes stories that can touch people. That was always the point."

For fans of neoclassical metal in the Netherlands, Hell or High Water is an album well worth looking forward to. Malmsteen is considered one of the founding fathers of the genre, and his return after an extended break from the studio is sure to turn heads among lovers of technically demanding guitar music.