Marty Friedman - Scenes (1992)Release ID: 25543
Washington-based guitar virtuoso Marty Friedman first came to my attention during the late 1980's when I stumbled across his Cacophony project with teenage prodigy & fellow shred master Jason Becker. Their 1987 debut album "Speed Metal Symphony" gave me a reasonable amount of pleasure, if mainly due to the ridiculously accomplished technique on display from both of the protagonists. I'd soon explore the duo's debut solo records with Becker's 1988 "Perpetual Burn" being significantly more interesting than Friedman's "Dragon's Kiss" from the same year. "Dragon's Kiss" is generally regarded as an essential release by guitar enthusiasts but I simply found its weaker tracks to overshadow the stronger material with his penchant for cheesy melodies having the final say on whether the album made the cut with me or not. Thankfully though, Friedman would join Megadeth soon afterwards & would go on to contribute to all five of their 1990's albums, the most notable being 1990's "Rust In Peace" which is still held up on a pedestal as one of the great thrash metal releases of all time in the present day. I also quite liked 1992's "Countdown to Extinction" & 1994's "Youthanasia" but in between those two commercially successful heavy metal records Marty would enter the Californian home studio of renowned Japanese new age music producer Kitaro to record his second solo album "Scenes" which would be released in November 1992. I'd forgiven Marty for the inadequacies of "Dragon's Kiss" by this stage, mainly because he absolutely blew my fucking face off with his performance on "Rust in Peace", so I picked up a copy of "Scenes" upon release, eager for more of Marty's exotic neoclassically-inspired stylings. What I got though was not what I was expecting at all because little did I know that Marty had been taken under Kitaro's wing & that "Scenes" would appear to be somewhat of a tribute to his master.
The metal credentials of "Scenes" aren't actually that straight forward because I'd suggest that the larger portion of the album is made up of genuine new age music of the Japanese variety. That's not necessarily a problem but the way it's been produced here sounds terribly dated & cheesy at times with cheap sounding synthesizers seemingly being the order of the day. Perhaps this shouldn't have been a surprise in retrospect given that the keyboards are performed by Kitaro's band mate Brian BecVar who has gone on to become known for his work with commercial pop artists like Celine Dion, Michael Bolton & Richard Marx. Friedman's clean guitar work appears to have been intentionally composed to reflect the whole Japanese theme & the way he uses string bends to accomplish this is really quite ingenius. His melodies are rarely dark or mysterious though. They're more often pleasant & uplifting which isn't usually my bag but I've made an honest attempt to overcome my preconceived notions here. The other significant component of the album is made up of heavy metal instrumentation with Megadeth drummer Nick Menza contributing the beats & most of the metal material is at least pretty decent. Hell, the short & brooding "Trance" is absolutely outstanding & I can't for the life of me understand why Marty wouldn't have elaborated on that idea any further as it's the clear highlight of the album for mine. Other strong inclusions include new age opener "Tibet" & "Realm of the Senses" which is very much a hybrid that explores both new age & Yngwie Malmsteen-ish neoclassical metal.
Look, there are actually more hits than misses on "Scenes" so it's not an absolute disaster. It's just that the weaker inclusions are bad enough to see them nullifying all of that good work which is a little disappointing to be honest. As I said, I'm not the biggest fan of "Dragon's Kiss" but I'd still probably take it over "Scenes" which doesn't say a lot for Marty's ability to produce a consistently compelling solo album. I mean, there's not even all that many moments where Marty shows off his dazzling technique here which would at least be something to grab onto for an old shred-head like me. Maybe I'm destined to never hear the great record that I'm sure Friendman has inside of him but you know what? I'm at peace with that.
