Reported on nearly every music site, Jake E. Lee (Badlands, Ozzy Osbourne) had some choice words to say about fellow shredder Yngwie Malmsteen.  While it’s not totally clear why there is such animosity by Lee towards Malmsteen, the surprise isn’t so much in what he said, but that someone had the balls to actually say it.

While on the podcast, “Talk Toomey,” Lee, who was promoting his soon to be released album, “Patina,” with his project Red Dragon Cartel, took the opportunity to talk about fellow shredder Yngwie Malmsteen.  “He’s a dick — that’s my main problem with him. He’s an arrogant fucking asshole, and he always has been. I don’t know if he is right now, to be honest…I haven’t seen him in forever. But I can only assume that if when you’re younger, you’re that arrogant and that big of a dick, that you really never change. So I assume he still is. But no, he was, he was a dick. And he was a great guitar player. But even then, he was really good at one little thing that he does, doing the sweeps and arpeggios and playing fast, and that’s all he could do. That’s one of my problems with him, it’s a very narrow band of guitar playing. He just focuses on this one part. He’s a shitty rhythm player; he can’t write a song worth a fuck. And I’m saying this, and this sounds bad, I feel a little bit bad, but knowing what an asshole he is, I don’t feel that bad. You can’t be that arrogant if you’re only really good at one minute aspect of the art of playing guitar. And that’s all he was, And, yeah, fuck him.”

Lee’s “Patina” is set to be released on November 9, 2018 through Frontiers Music Srl.