At first listen, the production is weak but the material is strong. I don't recall liking anything by Yngwie in quite a while. Perhaps Tim's presence inspired him? Who knows what goes on in his head?
Zod
EDIT: Worst cover ever?
Zod, I agree with you on all counts.
The production is worse than anything I've heard in years. I bought my CD tonight at Best Buy. I popped it into my car's CD player for listening on the way home. From the first track I thought something was wrong with my CD player -- like a channel was out or something.
So I ejected the disc and brought it home.
Tonight I'm listening to it with Denon components and B&W speakers -- a fine system for the kind of prog/power metal music I enjoy.
But Yngwie's CD still sounds like shit.
I think I can explain why.
Have you ever used an equalizer to create an inverted bell curve so that the highs and lows are enhanced? That's normally how I listen to music. I love it crisp. But I also love the low end. The middle is affected, but not too much because the trough of the bell doesn't drop to zero at any point.
However, let's say you have an 8-band equalizer and you take the middle four bands and you drop them almost to zero without increasing the two bands on the right or the two bands on the left. What you end up with is a tinny sound because the middle is gone. Plus, no real dynamics at either end.
What that affects mainly is the vocals (because the middle is where most vocals are mixed), although the entire listening experience is less enjoyable because it sounds, for lack of a better word,
irritating.
That's precisely what's wrong with the new Yngwie CD. It's irritating. It sounds like he mixed it on a car's AM radio. The vocals sound like they were phoned in -- not in their content (Ripper probably hasn't sounded better). But in their tone. They're thin, distant, like Ripper is singing from the other end of a phone conversation.
And maybe that's a better way to explain it. Have you ever watched a TV show (or listened to some CDs that use this device) and you hear a phone conversation? Think of the opening to The Matrix. Or Pink Floyd's The Wall. Or Queensryche's Operation:Mindcrime. The voice on the other end sounds tinny. And tiny. Detached and disembodied.
That's what Yngwie's new CD sounds like. Ripper is ripping. He's hitting high notes like you wouldn't believe (almost to excess). But the voice is 2-3 notches back from the music so it's, well,
irritating.
Do you know what I mean?
I'd expect as much from Yngwie. Vocals always come second in his book. But his guitars suffer, too. Well, not his solos. They're pretty clear because they're in an upper register. But the rhythm tone sounds almost as bad as the vocals. There's no chunk to it. No substance. No growl. No roar.
So you get crisp drums, crisp solos...and a disembodied voice competing with AM radio-quality rhythm guitar tones.
Irritating.
I had high hopes for this CD. I love Ripper's voice. I thought the pairing of the two would be electrifying. Yngwie is playing with ferocity, igniting his fretboard (hence, the shitty album cover). Ripper is singing his heart out. But the end result is sad. It sounds like Yngwie intentionally mixed Ripper badly so that Ripper wouldn't show him up.
Anyway, that's what I think of the new Yngwie CD. For what it's worth.
Bill
The dude is an ass, bottom line. The story about Criss was just a nice little tidbit of someone getting put in their place by a true legend. 
