Yngwie J. Malsteen 2024-07-04 Böle Arena & Club Helsinki, Finland

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Show info:
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Band: Yngwie J. Malsteen
Date: 2024-07-04
Venue: Böle Arena & Club
City: Helsinki
Country: Finland

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Recording info:
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Length: 1:36:52
Source: Audience recording, master source
Taper: j3saari
Equipment: CA-11 Cardioid Stereo Mics -> Olympus LS-P1
Catalog #: J3M072

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Tracklisting:
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01 Rising Force
02 I'll See the Light Tonight
03 Top Down, Foot Down
04 No Rest for the Wicked
05 Soldier
06 Into Valhalla
07 Baroque & Roll
08 Like an Angel
09 Now Your Ships Are Burned
10 Relentless Fury
11 Wolves At The Door
12 (Si Vis Pacem) Parabellum
13 As Above, So Below
14 Far Beyond the Sun
15 The Star-Spangled Banner
16 Seventh Sign
17 Instrumental
18 Smoke On The Water
19 Trilogy Suite Op.5
20 Guitar Solo
21 Red House
22 Badinerie
23 Guitar Solo
24 Drum Solo
25 You Don't Remember, I'll Never Forget
26 Acoustic Guitar Solo
27 Black Star
28 Heaven Tonight

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Lineage:
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Master WAV (stereo, 44kHz/16-bit)
--> Audacity with "iZotope RX10 De-Click" & "iZotope Ozone 11" plug-ins (edit, mastering)
--> CdWav (track splitting)
--> Trader's Little Helper (encoding to FLAC (Level 5))

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Taper notes:
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Oh dear lord, where to even begin.

This was the second time for me to see Yngwie live. First time was in 2006 at Tampere, and that is most probably
the only show that I have ever left early. Well, not too early, but at least a couple of songs before the finish.
I just felt that I had heard sufficient amount of notes at that point.

And don't get me wrong, I really like his music and especially the 5-6 first albums are excellent, and I still
play them regularly.

I wasn't planning on going to this show initially, but when they started selling the tickets with 20% discount
I thought to myself "hell, why not" and bought the ticket. Apparently the tickets were not selling that good
initially, hence the discount, and even though there were quite good amount of people present, it definitely was
not sold out.

But then to the actual show. First of all, it was fu***ng loud! The support act (Phil Campbell & The Bastard Sons,
will be posted later on) was playing on a reasonable but sufficient volume level, but this was something else.
And whereas the support band also had a good, balanced sound overall, Yngwies sound and mixing was all over the place.
At the start the drums & bass were overpowering everything, to that extent that it was difficult to hear Yngwie's
guitar. Can you believe that? Yeah, me neither. It improved gradually though when he cranked up the volume.
Overall the sound was quite... The ridiculously heavy use of delay in his vocals did not help at all.
But trust me when I say that the recording is actually pretty good, and sounds WAY better than how it sounded at the venue.
And then the keyboards - at some point they just vanished from the mix, and never to return. I saw the keyboardist
hands moving like there's no tomorrow, but you couldn't hear anything. This is very evident also in the recording,
when there's supposed to be some kind of dialogue between the guitar and keyboards.

Then it was interesting to view the dynamics between Yngwie and his band, or his guitar roudie. It all seemed to
me that they were, if not scared, but at lest quite vary of him. To me it also looked like Yngwie was having a bit
of a bad day. To be honest, the crowd did not go exactly wild, quite the opposite, so I would assume that this
was pissing Yngwie off a bit too. I guess most people were just trying to figure out what the hell was going on,
just like me. But nevertheless, it's never a good sign to see a band member (bass player in this case) yawning
during a concert :D

But what I was mostly disappointed with was how he is treating his songs. He has some great tunes in his catalogue,
but all those that were played were brutally butchered, the vocal parts were cut to minimum and more and more
shredding was added instead. All in all, to me the whole show felt like it was a one big-ass medley from start to
finish.

Sorry about the rant, but by downloading this recording you agree to be subjected to it :D

I did my best to dechipher what songs (or segments of songs) were actually played, but there most probably are
some mistakes... track #17 I could not figure out, so I just named it "Instrumental".

As usual, some photos are included too.

"Enjoy!"
j3saari in July 2024 

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