Solo albums by the former Megadeth guitarist.

Those readers who don’t know who Marty Friedman is by now must’ve been living in a very secluded world. As the guitarist in Megadeth throughout the nineties he cemented his reputation as one of the outstanding players of his generation with controlled aggressive riffs and innovative solos that owed much to his desire to remain at the top of his game and enjoy every minute of it, after his good friend in Cacophony, Jason Becker suffered an incurable dibilitating illness that to this day has left him unable to play although he remarkably and inspirationally continues to write music.

After achieving all that he wanted in Megadeth, having sold in excess of ten million albums with chart success around the world and invites onto prestigious tv shows, he decided to re-locate to Japan and go back to his solo projects and collaborating with Japanese artists in the pop and rock fields resulting in more success particularly in the Japanese charts. 27 Gold and Platinum albums allied to 5 Grammy Awards nominations is testament to his ability as an amazingly talented guitarist.

‘Tokyo Jukebox 2’ is the follow up to the first of his J-pop and J-rock covers album and sees him covering cultural themes, video games, anime and popular artists such as the sadly deceased Chinese cross-over superstar Teresa Teng as he plays his instrumental interpretation of the huge Japanese hit ‘Ame No Bojyo’ at a much faster tempo than the original. ‘Toire No Kamisama’ or ‘God In The Toilet’ (don’t ask) is a song by singer/songwriter Kana Uemura which was given two Japan record awards in 2010 and Marty again interprets the melody line to great effect.

On ‘Sunao Ni Naretara’ Marty has covered the soft, breezy and lovely million selling J-pop song by the beautiful JUJU feat. Spontania. He interprets it in a clever and bouncy way with a gorgeous clean tonal quality that is uplifting in feel whilst ‘Mata Kimi Koishiteru’ (I’m In Love With You Again) by Japanese female enka singer Fuyumi Sakamoto is actually a cover of contemporary Japanese duo Billy Ban Ban but was her biggest hit peaking at #3. Marty does an amazingly gorgeous version of this beautiful song akin to painting glorious landscapes with subtle colours as his tones and variant picking style with arpeggios and sustain evoke plenty of emotion.

‘Bad D.N.A.’ is the second CD of this double pack and is more traditionally suited to his Metal leanings. Opener ‘Specimen’ is a schizophrenic heavy piece with headbanging riffs and pounding drums interspersed with tonal jabs of fluid runs whilst the title track is full of rapid fire drumming mixed with strange keyboard effects and blistering arpeggios and riffs played through the overdrive. You get the picture. Jason Bittner (Shadow’s Fall) and Steve Lukather joined the party so fans of Marty Friedman will lap this up, guitarists will be pulling their hair out with blood-soaked fingers and I’ll just be marvelling at his sheer audacious dexterity! Flash son of a gun!

Carl Buxton