Best guitarists in hard rock and heavy metal
 

Ronnie Montrose - one of the best guitarists in the history of mankind.

I might go with some slightly odd choices here:

Jariot Lehtinen from the band Waltari.
https://www.metal-archives.com/image...rtist.jpg?0327
The guitarist everyone knows from that band is probably Sami Yli-Sirniö since he has played in Barren Earth and currently in Kreator as well.
Sami is great and all, but my favorite was always Jariot. He's plays very soulfully and I love his guitar tone. Go to 02:59 for a good example:





Pekka Olkkonen from the band Stam1na.
https://www.levytukku.fi/images/articles/pexin_orig.jpg
He writes almost all of the music in what is one of my top 3 metal bands in the world, so how could I not pick him? He plays all the solos as well and I love his style. Check out the whole section from 01:37 to 02:51 to see what's so special about this guy:





Kaoru from the band Dir En Grey.
http://images.equipboard.com/uploads...g?v=1499081379
Inventive, skilled, stylistically varied and a guitarist with a very recognizable expressiveness to his playing. So many great riffs, so many fantastic solos, so many interesting details in his guitar playing. Check out the section starting at 02:30 for an "argument" as to why this guy is top level material:

Mayhem's Euronymous. Introduced a playing style that gave birth to the second wave of black metal as we know it.

Ritchie Blackmore for me.

Mick Barr of Krallice, Orthrelm, Zach Hill, and the Flying Luttenbachers.

Shreddier


Better

Christopher Arp from Psyopus ranks pretty high for me.

Slayer have some of the only solos in metal that are worth truly giving a **** about as they made Slayer even more ****ing wild than they already were. And that's on top of having the sickest riffs ever. Don't even care how they stack up to other guitarists cause I'll never care about a guitar duo as much as I do Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman.

Nah. I think their soloing works but it's one of the weaker points of the group tbh.

Psyopus' guitarwork is as comical as it is fun and awesome. Listening to them atm and I think while I've been getting more indifferent to a lot of metalcore I've been secretly liking mathcore more, as Psyopus sound even better than the last time I listened to them.

I think this might have been the first mathcore song I ever heard and it's still got one of the most memorable main riffs I've ever heard.



I mean all Slayer solos are basically the same, but it's such an amazing gimmick that I kind of never get tired of it.

Slayer solos are indeed hugely underrated.