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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The fury is indeed released, August 22, 2005
Driving riffs and blazing solos dominate the opening track "Locked & Loaded". The album's title track has a nice building intro that is comprised of drum and keyboard progressions. Just when you think that the fury is going to be unleashed, Rising Force hits you with a curve ball and the chorus is the exact same tempo. Wanna guess where the fury is actually released? "Revolution" has a music feel to it that's reminiscent of mid eighties Malmsteen material. The double-kick drums and accenting power chords tend to stand out more than Yngwie's signature soloing here.
Holy crap! Yngwie finally found his heavy distortion pedal on "Cracking the Whip". The opening is just monstrous, while Doogie White's vocals drift from melodic to manic. A wicked, thick bass line sets the pace for "Bogeyman. For all the evil sounds and themes the verses conjure up, the chorus is quite uplifting. Yngwie takes the microphone for the first time in I can't remember how long on "Cherokee Warrior". His deep and soulful vocals are backed up by inspiring rhythms and harmonious backing vocals. Haunting keyboard tones and backing vocals set the tone of "Revelation (Drinking With The Devil)". This is clearly one of the more personal songs that Malmsteen has written. He still manages to pull off a grandiose solo of course.
The Bad
Yngwie, please play a different solo once in a while. Maybe a basic blues pentatonic instead of the fancy harmonic minor stuff. I'd like to meet the guys in the creative department that designed the CD cover.
The Verdict
After experimenting quite a bit with his last 4-5 albums, Malmsteen returns to what he does best with 4 instrumentals and 14 song driven tracks. The sound is a little dated, but nobody does it better than Malmsteen. On his latest album, the fury is indeed released
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Haven't we been here before?, June 28, 2005
You're going to read reviews below from people who love every movement of air that Yngwie creates with his string vibrations, and from others who think that he is the most boring and predictable player since the instrument was created.
I can understand where each side is are coming from, and, in a way, they're both right. Yngwie's my favorite player; not necessarily the best, but the most entertaining overall (to me) when you combine his technique, his ability and chops, and his presence. I've seen him eight or nine times in concert, and will continue to do so. But - and I've made this complaint before - as the title of this review implies, Yngwie seems content to continue staking ground he's already claimed rather than exploring new territory.
There's some good stuff here. Yngwie always comes through with a decent song to start the album, and "Locked and Loaded" is better than the last couple of albums' lead-off tracks - "Razor Eater" (which was a nice tribute to The Damnation Game, BTW) and "Prophet of Doom". But it doesn't reach the heights of "Never Die" or "Rising Force".
"Revolution" is more than competent, and, it's probably just me, but the flurry from 1:06-1:10 seems even more speedy than usual.
"Fuguetta" - Yngwie's played this as part of (one of) his solos in concert for decades, but it's good to see him finally lay it down in the studio, even with some of the string mutings.
"Cracking the Whip" and "The Bogeyman" both start off with cool heaviness, but then devolve into standard Yngwie and become overall average songs (although Bogeyman is the better of the two).
"Winds of War" - FAKE OUT!!!! The first minute+ of this starts out like it's going to be The Ballad, which I was waiting for (yeah, I love cheeseball metal ballads) but then the song changes over to stock mid-tempo fare.
"Magic and Mayhem" - I think this is better than any of the instrumentals on Attack!! or War to End All Wars.
I'm not going to continue with a song by song blow, but I have to mention how disappointed I was with "Let The Good Times Roll". It's actually a good up-tempo number with one of the better solos on the album - but when I saw the song title I thought, "Yngwie's covering Shirley & Lee? Sweet!" Yes, I thought Yngwie was about to take a risk and put his own touch on a classic doo-wop era song. Silly me.
For the veteran Yngwie fan, you're going to hear bits and pieces of other songs throughout this album. A few examples; the beginning vocals on "Exile" evoke "Anguish and Fear". "The Hunt" - "I Am A Viking". "Crown of Thorns - Crash and Burn". And then we have "Russian Roulette" - which starts off sounding exactly like Richard Andersson's Space Odyssey's "The House With A Hundred Windows". Maybe there's some classical piece that they're both giving a nod to? ( 12/24/05 - And Dream Theater's "Ytse Jam" has it, too. Haven't listened to WDDU for awhile, so I smacked my head in remembered memory when this came on.)
I've only played this all the way through a few times prior to writing this review. I'll keep it my player for a little longer so the songs can sink in a bit more; but I don't see myself sitting through this the whole way much more than that when there's plenty else out there. If you really miss the sound of older Yngwie, hunt yourself down a copy of Yngwie's The Genesis (which you can get for about fifteen bucks at guitar9 dot com.) Now THAT has some fire to it. Horrible vocals, but there's no comparison between the energy of Yngwie in that era versus the complacency of Yngwie in this one. Also, you'll hear the origin of lots of musical phrasing Yngwie used on his first several albums. Or else, and I'm about to commit the equivalent of blasphemy and heresy in the Church of Malmsteen, if you're looking for a more recent album that sounds like old Yngwie, try Joe Stump's Supersonic Shred Machine. That album's one-two punch of "Demon's Eye" and "Wrecking Machine" are more exciting than Yngwie's recent efforts. Go ahead. Excommunicate me. Say what you want, but at least I still believe in Yngwie enough to keep buying his albums.
Unleash the Fury is a good companion piece to his previous Attack!! album. By that I mean if you were satisfied with one, you'll feel the same about the other. That's neither intended as a compliment nor a criticism. It's just that the two sound very similar in terms of production and song quality. Take it for what it is.
I know the dyed-in-the-wool Yngwie fans are going to continue to rave about Unleash the Fury, but as for me, I'm putting Dragonforce's Sonic Firestorm on again. (Man, that album RIPS! Get it, get it, get it.) Unleash the Fury, which would be a worthy achievement for many players, is a collection of singles and (a few) doubles from a power player who should be swinging for the fences.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Really Just More Of The Same, November 8, 2006
I cut my teeth technically as a guitar player on the Rising Force and Marching Out albums so I'll always have respect for Yngwie for giving us those 2 albums. At that time his technical ability and style were novel and us guitarists took note. However, I agree with most of the lukewarm reviews here. Yngwie does recycle the same old diminished runs, harmonic minors runs and scalar patterns over and over and has done so on every album since those 2 aforementioned. It would be refreshing to hear him do some soloing in a major key for instance...I know he can do it...he almost never does though. This style of music needs to have alot of refreshing nuance, tempo changes, and scale variations and arpeggios to be interesting...Yngwie doesnt seem to want to explore new musical areas...he needs too...Having said that this album isnt horrible...its simply just more of the same.
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~ Yngwie Malmsteen
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by Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force 
