Who in your opinion is the biggest Yngwie rip off. The Swedish maestro has been plagiarised relentlessly over the years and I would be interested to hear you guys view on this. I'm gonna start you off by saying Katsu Ohta, a Japanese guitarist from the band Ark Storm. Check him out on youtube if you can. He rips the Yingster off like nothing I've ever seen.

P.s can we please not get into the Malmsteen/Blackmore debate on this cos anyone who says Yngwie sounds like Blackmore is tone deaf :ph43r:

hahaha Katsu Ohta definitily a pretty good candidate... those Japs make pretty good clones of Western people :P .

Joe Stump anybody? I mean... I still enjoy his music and its not identical to Yngwie but, he is clearly the biggest influence to Stump... everything he does. He even puts the usual "one blues/rock song" per album thing that Yngwie usually does.

Joe for definite. I'll say somethimg for Joe but, at least he admits it. I have read several interviews with him where he referred to Yngwie as the master. There's a video of him on youtube wearing a Rising Force t-shirt. Joe has also opened for Yngwie so I guess he has earned some respect from Yngwie.

I love Joe and have all of his stuff.

Man Kidal is another guitarist who takes it to the extreme.

I always thought Chris Impelleteri was a big YJM clone.
He approached Yngwie in a bar in L.A once and said he had been playing the same style as long as YJM only Yngwie got famous before him. Malmsteen was pissed at that and on hearing his material said 'Anyone can learn to type real quick but not everyone can write a good novel!' :P

haha I have the same Rising Force T-shirt! :lol:

Thats a fantastic story, but I don't see Impellitteri as a clone at all. TBH I don't terrible like Impellitteri... I mean 17th Century Chickin' Pickin' is a complete masterpiece... one of the best in the whole genre... but it is a diamond in the rough. All of his other stuff is basic metal songs with power chord riff that sound the same... boring solos... the only other piece he made that didn't sound like everything else was Hungry Days (besides his covers)... good riff in it. Everything else is boring, with no melody let alone very little lead playing at all. I find it really strange, such a good player but only one song thats worth anything... and a lot at that.

Agreed. I bought a 4 song E.p when he first emerged years ago. That was pretty good and is extremely hard to get now. You are spot on on the 17th century piece, a true classic in IMO. I think he bases far too much of his playing on the harmonic minor mode and like Rusty Cooley and Michael Angelo Batio seems more hellbent on notes per nanosecond than phrasing his solos better to suit the framework of the song.

Like you say a good player but seems to have lost it somewhere along the line.