Before I actually say something about this album, I want to make clear that I`m not a Malmsteen fan at all. There is nothing wrong with technical shred albums; but Malmsteen always drifts too far into the classical aspect of (guitar) music, which basically ruins any feel for rock or metal that was going on. Technically impressive? Yes. Great songwriting? (Very) debatable.

After checking out some of the man’s older material, things don't seem to have changed much. Malmsteens blend of his own type of songs with long orchestrated intros and outros, spiced up with technically amazing solos still sounds the same as it did 15 years ago. Some songs that stood out in the guitar-extravanganza were opener ‘Locked & Loaded’, which is basically just a great heavy metal song. ‘The Bogeyman’ starts out with a pumping bassline, which sets up a groovy hard rock song, spiced up with some maybe unnecessary shredding. The instrumentals are all pretty typical, although ‘Guardian Angel’ could do without the cliché keyboard orchestra on the background since the main theme is pretty good on its own.

Some other reviews hail the "good" production; but I just can’t agree with that. Compared to most modern metal records, this album sounds very stale and empty, almost demo-like in my opinion. Maybe his older cds suffer from some terrible production issues, but I can not say that the actual sound of this album is anything impressive.

If you are a Malmsteen fan, you probably already have this record and can add 20 or 30 points to my review. If you never heard of the man, you can just download any random song of his body of work to see if it's your thing. The man seems to stick to a "If it works, don’t change it" work ethic, so most of his material will sound alike to newcomers. My conclusion is: For fans only.