Is Ywingie Malmsteen Prog?

Bob Greece wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ why are you so sure? Do you really think there is a chance?

Of course ... as Prog Related. His early albums are REALLY GOOD - and the debut album in particular is quite complex.

Edited by MikeEnRegalia

Yngwie Malmsteen is already in the Archives. He plays guitar on Derek Sherinian's Black Utopia album.

^ wouldn't you agree that on his first 3 albums he did a damn good job at combining classical music and metal?

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ why are you so sure?

Do you really think there is a chance?

Malmsteen will never ever be in Prog Archives

shark wrote: Does it really matter if he's prog or not? The real issue is whether his music is good or not.  As a guitarist he's exciting to listen to, but I'd agree that the songwriting isn't exeptional, but then again I'd say the same thing about Vai and Satriani

Vai is an exceptional songwriter and composer.

No.

this man alone is responsible for bombing us back
to the musical stone age.

it doesn't make you a better actor if you can recite
your lines four times as fast as everyone else. and
that is a quote by none other than ritchie blackmore.

i would say that his influences relies in prog music and classical music, he is the very first bond into heavy metal/speed metal stuff, i spoke about that in another topic, i do think that his speed at playing, and his ability to mix neoclassical stuff is great, but the problem is that he started to write the same album over and over again since "eclipse", where the main title piece is a good example of an instrumental prog oriented song, but he is not prog... the lacks of originallity and capabilities to write and compose has kept him into second class guitar player.

To me Steve Vai has more idea of prog than the other two members of that G3 video, he actually played with Frank Zappa, and he actually has evolved into a better guitarist, he is the only one of a very big numer of players that actaully has left the idea of burning the guitar with speedness to turning the sound into ambient and crazy sounds

I own "Attack!!" from Malmsteen.

I like the music sometimes, but I don't think that it is prog. But very high technical skills are an aspect of Prog an Malmsteen has very high technical skills. And he also includes non-rock (classical) Elements in his music and that is also a main aspect of prog (not only including classical Elements but including some at all!!).

In Conclusion I wouldn't say that his music isn't Prog but it ist more Prog than any "normal" rock/metal music.

In my Opinion the question if something is prog or not is always relative. Something may be Prog if you compare it with music which is definitely no prog but it doesn't seems like prog if you compare it with "real" prog.

.. Lyrics you mean? it's true most of his songs are instrumental, and the ones that do have lyrics are usually completely inane ("I am a Viking" is a prime example)

Obviously he is lacking in that department. However, if someone like Ian Anderson or Neil Peart wrote lyrics for him...