BLACK SABBATH's IOMMI is Metal Hammer's No. 1 Metal Guitarist

March 17, 2005

BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi has topped the poll of "Riff Lords" — best metal guitarists — in Metal Hammer magazine's March 2005 issue. The magazine praises Tony's "highly distinctive style of fretsmanship that's economical yet crushingly effective." And it anticipates the comments from readers of "it was so obvious that you guys were going to pick Iommi" by saying "any way we tried to cut it, we just couldn't escape the fact that Tony Iommi is THE man!"

The Top Ten (of the 50 listed) are:

01. Tony Iommi
02. Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers (IRON MAIDEN)
03. Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin)
04. Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield (METALLICA)
05. Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing (JUDAS PRIEST)
06. Slash (VELVET REVOLVER / GUNS N' ROSES)
07. Daron Malakian (SYSTEM OF A DOWN)
08. Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman (SLAYER)
09. Marten Nagstrom and Fredrik Thordendal (MESHUGGAH)
10. Edward Van Halen (VAN HALEN)

In other news, "‘The Stories Behind The Songs" feature in the latest edition of Classic Rock magazine focuses on the BLACK SABBATH track "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath".

Tony recently spoke to Greg Prato from the magazine and shared his thoughts on the track:

On his writers block:

"I really panicked: 'Oh my God, I can’t seem to think of anything that we like!' I could play stuff, but it just wasn’t sinking in; I didn’t like it."

On combating the problem:

"We rented an old castle in the Forest of Dean. And it was just us there. What we did was we set up the equipment in the dungeons of the castle, to try and get some vibe going. And then that was it — we came up with 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', and the rest came fairly shortly afterwards. The block had gone."

On shooting the video in bassist Geezer Butler's garden:

"What I remember about that is that we just turned up and that was it, really — we're doing a video!"

The full story appears in Classic Rock's April edition (issue 78),on sale now.

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