RISING FORCE: MARCHING OUT

After the ground breaking and excellent debut album, Malmsteen and co. followed it up with Marching Out. Given the impressive debut the present album is a little bit of a disappointment, but it is still a good album. While Rising Force was mostly instrumental and quite unconventional and indeed very progressive, Marching Out is more conventional in its nature and features more vocal numbers. Songs like I'll See The Light Tonight and Don't Let It End, even if decent songs in their own right, have a more "commercial" sound and feel than anything from the debut. The worst aspect of the vocal numbers lies not in the music but in the lyrics. I Am A Viking is a good case in point; strong musically, but cheesy lyrically.

There are, however, moments of brilliance also on this album and these moments are primarily the instrumental tracks and the instrumental sections in the vocal tracks. Don't get me wrong though, Jeff Scott Soto does a good job behind the microphone again and remains one of the very best vocalists Malmsteen ever had, but somehow he sang better on the debut. The brilliant keyboard solos of Jens Johansson that were such an important part of the sound of the debut are still here but sadly they are fewer, shorter and farther in between on this album. Also, though often very good, the guitar/keyboard duels between Malmsteen and Johansson add little new to what they already did on the debut. The originality and novelty of the first album is indeed hard to match.

Overall, I would say that the second half of this album is stronger than the first side; Overture 1383, Anguish And Fear and the instrumental title track are, for example, all great tracks. In many ways, Marching Out is somewhat "caught in the middle" between Malmsteen's two best albums, Rising Force and Trilogy.

Recommended as a companion piece to Rising Force, but it is not the ultimate place to start your investigation of Malmsteen's works.

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