Yngwie Malmsteen "Eclipse" Album Review Featuring Keyboardist Mats Olausson

When the album Eclipse was written, Yngwie Malmsteen by this time had released his fifth full length album. The year was 1990 and a new decade was beginning. With this album, we have a new keyboard player in the name of Mats Olausson that had been with Yngwie pretty much ever since. He has been the only real constant member since that time. And for this album there is another new vocalist. His name is Goran Edman who is from Sweden. The album contains 11 songs for over 45 minutes in length. The album’s lyrical concepts deal with relationships and love. The production is crisper compared to 1988’s Odyssey album.

1. Making Love
2. Bedroom Eyes
3. Save Our Love
4. Motherless Child
5. Devil in Disguise
6. Judas
7. What Do You Want?
8. Demon Driver
9. Faultline
10. See You In Hell (Don’t Be Late)
11. Eclipse (instrumental)

The first song "Making Love" is about a person that discovers that the person he loves is breaking his heart. He still wants to make love to her. Many times, people will be attracted to partners that are not right for them.

With this album Yngwie seems to incorporate more keyboard orchestration and sounds which make it interesting. This is particularly true in the song called Judas. This is the third consecutive album with a different vocalist. Mark Boals and Joe Lynn Turner sang on the two previous releases prior to this one. That song Judas starts out with keyboard playing before turning into a solid and classic rock song. That song is probably the best song on the album as Goran really pours lots of emotion and basically sings his heart out. The songs "Bedroom Eyes" and "Faultline" are songs that the listener should probably skip over because they are not all that great. Motherless Child is another one of those songs with good vocals, heavy guitars and overall just awesome musicianship. This one has always been a favorite of mine. The guitar solo in this song is particularly awesome because of its speed and feeling. The song "Devil in Disguise" contains some operatic kind of chanting in the beginning. It also has some heavy guitar playing when the solo is being played at the same time. This one is another solid song just like the one before it. Other good songs on this album include Demon Driver, What Do You Want, and See You in Hell (Don’t Be Late).

Yngwie also seems to have a fascination with instrumental songs as he did in 1990. The title track "Eclipse" is another solid instrumental track. You can tell that it has the obvious neoclassical elements in it along with a section that sounds like it has an Arabic kind of influence to it. Looking back at Eclipse as an album, it may actually be better than the 70 points I had given it earlier. One reason is that the song “Bedroom Eyes” sounds like it has more energy to it. “Save Our Love” is a love ballad that is lyrically about a man trying to save his relationship that went wrong. He says that we should make all the wrongs right and there is no beginning or end. He is crying for help from above in any attempt to save his relationship. If you are able to save your relationship after it went down a wrong path then good for you! The first three songs on Eclipse set the tone for what is a far better album than even I had previously thought. The album still has a sort of 1980s sound to it even though it was released in 1990. This would set in motion one good release after another for perhaps the most popular Swedish neoclassical musician.