10 Greatest Rock Bands With Two Guitar Players

When Judas Priest were first cutting their teeth in Birmingham, the entire concept of metal didn't even have a name yet. The likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin may have been setting the tone for something darker on the horizon, but Priest were one of the first bands to actually claim the title of a metal band, with all of the denim and leather that would become the uniform years down the road. There had to be a little more fire than just guitar riffs though, and the guitar team of KK Downing and Glenn Tipton had the potential to tear your head off.

Whereas Sabbath and even Deep Purple may have had one foot trailing back into the blues a lot of the time, the early Priest tracks seemed to throw most of the blues roots out the window, making something that was a lot more muscular and focused heavily on brutality like Beyond the Realms of Death or Victim of Changes. Whenever they soloed though, you could always tell them apart as well, with Glenn tearing your head off with fast riffs and KK losing his mind on the whammy bar, almost like a demented version of what Jimi Hendrix would have done.

The real spice behind Priest's guitar sound though was always the harmonies, where both of them would play licks in lock step with each other to create something that sounded a lot more mean than just your average hard rock guitar riff. One guitar player may have sufficed in any average rock band, but when you listen to something like The Hellion for the first time, you're hearing the guitar symphony from Hell.