Read a good book every now and then: The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists

Besides his activities as singer of the Dutch doom legend Officium Triste and writing for several magazines, Pim Blankenstein is also someone who loves to read a good book about bands and artists. Heavy bands and artists of course, for who in his right mind desires to read crap about pop bands, right? Therefore Pim takes control of this corner of Lords Of Metal and will enlighten us with his thoughts about everything interesting in the world of rock literature on a monthly basis. This month he reports about ‘The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists’ by Joel McIver.

Meanwhile Joel McIver can be seen as one of the most important writers of books on music, mainly about metal but as a journalist he hasn’t got any problems writing a book on, for instance, Ice Cube.
I already reviewed the book http://www.lordsofmetal.nl/showspecial.php?id=179&lang=en " target=_blank>Extreme Metal II which I wasn’t too thrilled about. But McIver did write other books that are interesting. You’ll see his name appear in future issues of Lords of Metal I can tell.

Anyway, Joel again made a list like in ‘Extreme Metal II’. This time it’s not about his perception on the best bands but on the best metal guitarists. Guitarists from proper metal bands, so no virtuoso guitarists like Eddie van Halen or Yngwie Malmsteen. McIver selected guitarists on their skill and their influence on metal, so you’ll find plenty of rhythm guitarists among these 100. Of course I’m not going to tell you who’s on 100 and who’s on 1. I am going to tell that Joel shows he knows about playing guitar, he actually writes for Total Guitar magazine as well, and he really is able to declare his decisions on specific guitarists. Everything is quite thorough in fact. The chosen guitarists have something to tell as well and McIver even included ‘genius moments’. In short, this is a very cool book and you don’t even have to be a guitarist.

The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists
Joel McIver www.joelmciver.co.uk
Jawbone Press www.jawbonepress.com
ISBN 978-1-906002-20-6