Leftover Takeout

marksbirch:

METAL MONDAY SHRED WEEK: Black Star by Yngwie Malmsteen - Where else to start Shred Week but with the shred god of Sweden?  I could start with Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads or even Uli Roth, but Yngwie was when shred went nuclear.  He did not just play classically tinged guitar solos or do some two-hand tapping, he took the entire classical music bible and launched it like a missile into the world of rock.  While some could accuse him of simply ripping Bach and Paganini, he was the first to translate it to the language of metal and make it sound awesome.

I could put up any number of Yngwie songs, but really who are we kidding?  Black Star was where it all started, the lead track off of his first studio solo album Rising Force.  While I might think Far Beyond the Sun or Trilogy Suite Op. 5 are more shred worthy, this is the tune everyone goes back to eventually to compare chops.     While many shred tunes sound overly clinical by burying the listener with a cavalcade of notes, Yngwie infused feeling and musicality making tracks like Black Star sound like actual songs rather than guitar exercises.

Going off pure memory here.  Discovered by Mike Varney in Guitar Player magazine’s amateur guitarist “Spotlight” in 1982 (also, if memory serves, a 15 y/o Paul Gilbert was featured in the same article), Yngwie replaced Steve Vai in Alcatraz, then joined the band Steeler and finally did his own release.  ”Black Star” represents one of the finest introductions to a guitarist with a complete style intact that has been often emulated, but never quite duplicated.