Heavy metal as a genre can be attributed primarily to Black Sabbath and their 1970 self- titled debut album, but the seeds of our beloved music and culture were sown much earlier.
Thanks to guitar manufacturers and designers like Les Paul and George Beauchamp, the electric guitar emerged during the 1930s and revolutionised the way that music sounded, injecting presence and volume into the blues and paving the way for the birth of rock’n’roll a decade or two later.
Read the article in its entirety here: Lords of the riff: The greatest metal guitarists of all time