Speed Metal Symphony

Cacophony was basically an excuse for a shred-off between guitarists Marty Friedman and Jason Becker. Their first of two albums, 1987’s Speed Metal Symphony, employed session drummer Atma Anur, and Friedman doubled as bassist. Vocalist Peter Marrino has a decent tough-guy voice and a clenched-teeth delivery similar to Rigor Mortis’s Bruce Corbitt, occasionally releasing the kind of upper-register screams Pantera’s Phil Anselmo was once capable of. The songs are… well, they’re exactly the kind of thing two lead guitarists would write. Big riffs, tempo changes, occasional swerves into post-fusion dissonance, and plenty of screaming, fleet-fingered solos. But Becker and Friedman aren’t just racing past each other over and over; they’re playing together, harmonizing and bolstering each other’s work, and demonstrating facility in a variety of styles in the process — there are midtempo power metal songs here as well as speed metal blowouts, and the instrumental, album-ending title track goes through multiple… sure, let’s call them “movements” in its 9:32 running time.