Heavy metal has a huge line of guitar players who dominated the stage and played like the demons the vocalists sung about. Lets talk about three guitarists who influenced the sound of heavy metal, and how they still impact on the genre even today.

• Randy Rhoads. Randy Rhoads was remembered more for his work with ex Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne rather than the LA band Quiet Riot. Randy Rhoads was instrumental in the writing of Ozzy classics ‘Crazy train,’ and ‘Dee’. Unlike most rock players Randy had a musical grounding in Classical playing, working it into the first two albums that he played on with Ozzy. 1979′s ‘Blizzard of Oz’ album and 1981′s ‘diary of a madmen’. It is believed that Rhoades would’ve gone on to leave the band to study classical guitar at UCLA, and he would seek out classical guitar tutors on tour with Ozzy to keep up his knowledge and playing skill. The specialist guitars that Jackson had made for him are extremely popular with metal guitar players. Rhoads lost his life in a plane crash in 1982 and guitar playing and character has been paid tribute to numerous times throughout the years.
• Chuck Schuldiner. ‘Death’s main axeman, vocalist and head songwriter. Hailed as the father of the death metal subgenre, a term he himself wasnt comfortable with, Chuck was a huge influence on many guitar players and extreme metal. ‘Scream bloody gore’, the first album from Death, was the template for the genre known as death metal, but with each album the style and directions changed. Death released four more albums before Schuldiner folded the band in 1999 to play guitar in a new band ‘control denied’, which released the one album ‘the fragile art of exsistance’. Schuldiner lost his battle with cancer in 2001, the metal community had raised money on many occassions to pay for his operations.
• Darrell Lance Abbott -’Dimebag’. The ‘infamous’ guitarist for Pantera and Damageplan, who could be held responsible for the current state of metal guitar playing -in a good way. Pantera started life in 1981 as a glam metal band in Texas, but adopted a heavier, more groove laden approach for the 1989 album ‘Cowboys from hell’. Thier next album 1992′s ‘Vulgar display of power’ was the band breakthrough album, featuring the songs ‘this love’,'walk’, and ‘a new level’. ‘Far beyond driven’, the next album, reached number one in the US billboards charts at a time when metal wasnt considered popular. Pantera also released ‘Greater Southern Trendkill’ and ‘Re-inventing the steel’, after which Pantera split, as bassist Rex Brown and vocalist Phil Anselmo went off to do ‘Down’ and ‘Superjoint ritual’ and Dimebag and his brother and drummer Vinnie Paul created ‘Damageplan’. Dimebag was shot while playing onstage in Dec 2004, his influence is still seen in many bands such as ‘Lamb of God’ today.

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