First off I apologise if this should have been posted in one of the help threads, but I figure it needn't be because my request isn't genre specific per se:

I'm looking for recommendations for metal bands that incorporate incredibly technical neo-classical shredding, arpeggios, sweeping, etc but in the context of music not defined solely as 'shred' (ie. the way in which the archives lists 'shred' as one of Malmsteen's genres). I think few people would deny that stuff like Malmsteen's Rising Force, Michael Angelo Batio, Jason Becker, Cacophony and musical projects of that ilk amount to little more than vehicles by which the respective leaders can showcase their incredible playing. While I do enjoy listening to the latter, I'm looking for other kinds of metal that incorporates such neo-classical virtuosity, but without neo-classical virtuosity being the sole purpose of the music. I'm not sure if this is a very abstract concept or not, but I guess the obvious example would be Necrophagist's 'Epitaph' which is a death metal album that features loads of neo-classical shredding. Some of Morbid Angel's stuff would prob come under the category too when one considers Trey's purported classical influence and some of the stuff on albums like Blessed Are The Sick.

Any recs? Thanks in advance!

Coroner - Punishment For Decadence
neo-classical shredding thrash metal
and also Toxik - Think This

Mercyful Fate, perhaps. I've never quite grasped the whole shredding thing though.

Windham Hell is all you need.

How about Racer X?

Symphony X and Heathen have some nice technical neo-classical shredding without neglecting their songwriting.

I am not in a position to tell you how technical it is - more or less than your requirements that is - but Adagio may be what you're looking for.

Symphony X
Early Children of Bodom
Deep Purple!

Anything from Gargoyle (Jpn)'s era with She-Ja, or any of Volcano (Jpn)'s material. She-Ja plays guitar with them now, and most of his solos are neo-classically influenced and shred like hell. I gotta warn you for Gargoyle though, before Kentaro joined the band and She-Ja left they were more experimental and Avant-Gardey so you may run into things like banjo solos and disco songs.

Symphony X is full of wankery... but the Paradise Lost album is a prime example of non-wankish shredding. Don't know if I'd call it "neo-classical," but it's certainly great guitar work.

CoB? God, not them again. That's hardly neo-classical stuff. It's what metal bands call "neo-classical" to give themselves the image of being more intelligent or cultured... really, there's little that's actually reminiscent of the Classical period.

Deep Purple's guitar work is certainly Classically-inspired (well, more Baroque, really) with Ritchie Blackmore behind the axe. So much so that the solos in Highway Star and Burn border on copying Bach and Vivaldi, respectively. Not that that's a bad thing!