Yngwie Malmsteen - The Genesis
- FaceOff - עימות חזיתי
- 21 hours ago
- 2 min read
On December 24, 2002, Yngwie Malmsteen released “The Genesis”, an archival album that reaches further back than any other point in his catalog, to the moment when he was barely seventeen years old and already thinking years ahead of everyone else.
“The Genesis” is not a debut, not a compilation, and not a lost studio album. It is a window into Malmsteen’s adolescence as a musician, built from recordings made around 1980, long before fame, contracts, or expectations. These are the tapes of a teenage guitarist who had already absorbed classical theory, devoured hard rock, and decided that blues tradition was not enough for what he wanted to say. What we hear here is not refinement, but instinct.
At that age, Malmsteen was already shaping the core of what would become neoclassical metal. Inspired by Bach, Paganini, and the dramatic guitar language of Ritchie Blackmore and of course Jimi Hendrix whose "Voodoo Child" cover is included in the album, Malmsteen was experimenting with harmonic minor scales, fast arpeggios, and violin-like phrasing at a time when most guitarists were still rooted in pentatonic comfort zones. Even in these early recordings, the guitar is not part of the band, it is the band.
Earlier in 2002, bassist Marcel Jacob issued “Birth of the Sun” album under the "Rising Force" name, also based on these early recordings. Shortly afterward, Malmsteen released “The Genesis” as his own definitive statement, featuring most of the same tracks, but with Marcel Jacob's bass tracks redone by him, reworking parts of the material and reclaiming these songs as the true starting point of his musical identity.
Listening closely, it becomes clear that many of the tracks on “The Genesis” are not dead ends, but seeds. Musical themes, progressions, and compositional ideas introduced here would later reappear in more developed forms across Malmsteen’s career. Riffs evolve, melodic phrases resurface, and structural concepts later blossom on his solo albums. “The Genesis” allows you to hear those ideas before they were sharpened by studio budgets and decades of perfectionism.
The performances are raw and sometimes uneven, but that is precisely their value. The production is minimal, the arrangements skeletal, and the vocals (by Malmsteen himself) secondary. These recordings capture Malmsteen before discipline overtook impulse, when speed was pursued for discovery rather than display. You can hear him pushing boundaries simply to see where they break.
There is no sense of calculation, only obsession. That purity makes “The Genesis” one of the most revealing documents in his discography.
For Listening: Spotify