I'm not a fan of Megadeth, per se, but I can appreciate Dave Mustaine as a guitar player and an artist. You don't need me to tell you that his vocals are an acquired taste at best, though. So when I found out that the band put out an EP in which Mustaine's grating vocals were replaced with Marty Friedman's lead guitar, I rejoiced. It's so great to hear the band's talent and knack for melody shine without words, especially when those words are sung by Mustaine in his signature whine/growl/seethe. Granted, as evidenced by the title and album cover, the 5 songs that are featured here are originally from Cryptic Writings, an album that is somewhat notorious for being mired in cliched radio rock predictability, but the cliches that are present on this album do little to detract from the strong riffs and interplay. I never bothered much with Cryptic Writings, so I don't know how many differences there are between the songs on there and these versions, but apparently some of the songs on this album are significantly different from the originals: "A Secret Place" has a really beautiful quiet bridge with strings and an oboe in place of the regular rock one in the original, and the "She-Wolf" featured on this album is a Spanish guitar version (until near the end, anyway). It'd be great to hear instrumental versions of Megadeth songs that weren't clearly written to become hit singles -- especially considering the talent of all the bandmembers -- but as it is there's not much to complain about.
Favorite track: "A Secret Place"
Least favorite track: "Almost Honest"
Get it here
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