10 Best Guitarists Of The 2000s

Pop punk as a genre is not necessarily known for its complexity. Oftentimes, many bands just stick to traditional power chord rhythms and occasionally throw a simple guitar solo into the mix to break up the monotony. Rather than follow the norm of their peers, My Chemical Romance just plugged into the Marshalls and let it rip.

Guitarist Ray Toro certainly has the pop-punk side of his playing down to a tee, with adrenaline-fueled downstrokes and tuneful melodic passages. However, the entirety of the album The Black Parade is a showcase for Toro's fretwork on a truly epic scale. On that record, Toro took all the melodic ear-candy of pop-punk and combined it with the gravitas of Queen. This led to some stunning runs like on "Dead!" and the almost-eponymous "Welcome to the Black Parade."

And don't just stop after that album, guitar nerds. Across almost every record MCR has put out, Toro shows his ability to send the listener into a frenzy with his riffage. With the band reforming and selling out stadiums in recent years, fans around the world are chomping at the bit to see Ray Toro back in action, annihilating every audience with his fretwork.