“When I started making records, I would just take the songs I had lying around,” Yngwie admits. “Later on, I fell into a schedule — make a record, tour the record and then write the next record. Over the pandemic, I realised it was better to focus completely uninterrupted, so I stayed at home to write this album over the course of eight months. I had around 80 or 90 tracks finished, and then I had to decide which ones were the strongest.”

“Even without a guitar in my hands, the music just comes to me,” Yngwie reasons. “It’s like that movie ‘Amadeus’. Mozart was getting music given to him in complete form. I understand the building blocks and can therefore build you anything you like. If you asked me to write you a death metal song, call me back in five minutes, and I’d have it ready for you. You want country and western or reggae? No problem. I can give you whatever you want. The language of music is simple. There are certain notes that belong together in whatever stylistic direction and sound pleasant to the ear. The ideas don’t come all the time, but when they do, it’s like an avalanche. The pieces I choose for my records are like gifts that I capture because they amaze me. I’m very lucky in that sense.”

“Hell Or High Water” is an album that’s bursting with emotion from all corners, but the closing track “Father” is undoubtedly the most spirited of them all, written in tribute to the guitar legend’s dad, who passed away last year.

“He was an amazing man,” remembers Yngwie. “I was proud to have him as a father, and I loved him. I wanted to dedicate all of this to him, and that one particular track is for him. I wanted others to feel what I felt when they hear it. Niccolò Paganini once said, ‘One must feel strongly in order to make others feel strongly’. It’s one thing to be a typewriter and another thing to be someone who writes stories that can touch people. That was always the point.”

In an interview earlier this year, with Jimmy Kay of Canada’s The Metal Voice, legendary Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen spoke about his plans for the follow-up to his latest album, “Parabellum”, which was released in July 2021 via Music Theories Recordings/Mascot Label Group. He said:  ”It’s done. It’s in the can.”

Asked if the upcoming LP is an all-instrumental effort, Yngwie said: “No. No. No. It’s four songs I sing on it. I’m really happy with it. it’s gonna get a November release.”

Regarding the musical direction of his new album, Malmsteen said: “I would say it’s very Malmsteen-esque. It sounds like Yngwie Malmsteen… You will definitely hear the similarities. I would say some of the instrumental stuff is really, really nuts. But there’s some cool metal — I’d say, like, not metal, but whatever you wanna call it now.”

Elaborating on what fans can expect from his new LP, Yngwie said: “The album’s called ‘Hell Or High Water’. And I made it specifically to fit on the vinyl record. Nine songs, one bonus track, but it’s 46 minutes… I deliberately made it like that. I had a lot more ideas, a lot more songs, but I made it so it’s exactly that.”

Malmsteen went on to say that he made “Hell Or High Water” specifically so that it will be heard in its entirety as opposed to as a collection of standalone tracks.

“This album I just made now — most of my albums, I would say — you couldn’t just take one song and it’d be representative of the record,” Yngwie explained. “They all complement each other. They all have their own thing. ‘Oh, that’s what the album sounds like.’ No, because the next song doesn’t sound like that. You have to hear it as an album. It’s made as an album, like a movie. ‘Oh, yeah, look at that scene. Yeah, three minutes.’ No, that’s not enough. You have to see the whole movie. You read the whole book. And I made it that the sequence of the songs and everything, they’re following —I think about tempos and key signatures and stuff like this. And I’m really happy with it.”

Asked if “Hell Or High Water” is a concept album, Yngwie said: “No, I wouldn’t call it that. I mean, if you wanted to, you could analyze it any way you like. You can go, ‘Yeah, it’s a concept album,’ but it’s not meant to be. But it could be, I guess.”