Today on the way to take Kelsi home we stopped at the mall and as I was browsing through CD’s I came across Yngwie J. Malmsteens Concerto Suite for Electric Guitar and Orchestra in E flat minor – Op.1.

Needing a change of pace, I picked it up.

This album is extremely cool. Its a full concerto, written for an orchestra with the electric guitar as a solo instrument. Before you shrug it off as just another orchestra CD like Kiss Symphony or Metallica S&M, it isn’t. This is a completely different animal. This is an actual classical piece of music, written by Malmsteen himself, with the guitar as the lead solo instrument — not a rehash of existing songs with an orchestra behind them.

The only albums I’ve really liked from Malmsteen are his first, Rising Force and Trilogy. All of his other albums seemed “more of the same”, where you are essentially beaten over the head by how fast he can play and how much he can dominate the song. This album, however, is amazing, and its quite obvious that this is the type of music Yngwie was meant to play. I think this is by far his best album to date.

If you see this in the store, pick it up. It is, dare I say it, a masterpiece. On a scale from one to five in both originality and just plain beautiful music, I give it a seven.