10 Hardest Metal Songs To Play On Guitar

It's practically a given that the list of hardest songs to play on guitar feature Eddie Van Halen at some point. Ever since his namesake band's debut, Eddie has practically developed his own lane of guitar playing, from the amazing tapping techniques to the insane speed and dexterity he has when he's just playing rhythm guitar. While many may have singled out something like Eruption for this list, Eddie actually managed to sneak his trickiest licks into one of his band's biggest songs.

Though 1984 does get treated as the pop album by some VH fans, Hot For Teacher is one of the most challenging feats of stretching that the rock world had ever seen. By this point, fans had been used to Eddie using tapping to create weird sounds out of his guitar, but this was something else entirely. Instead of using the traditional tapping, the intro to Hot For Teacher shows Eddie reaching his fretting hand across 4 frets to get the mammoth wall of sound he needs.

Once you think you've got the whole thing down, the riff moves, involving string skipping, reaching up the fretboard, and pretty much assaulting the guitar in more ways than one. Though the song eventually picks up even more steam in the solo section, this first 30 seconds of Eddie's playing is enough to paralyze any unadvanced player.