This opinion might land me in some hot water with music purists everywhere, but I believe the greatest era of guitar wizardry came in the 1980s.

The decade featured some of the most revered and celebrated virtuosos to ever walk the planet, both critically and commercially.

But for every Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads, there were plenty of other face-melters who existed in some form of relative obscurity compared to their more famous counterparts.

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That’s not to say the bands these guitarists were in weren’t successful in their own right, but if you were to ask a mainstream pop-listener from the era who these guys were, chances are you’d get looks of befuddlement.

Which is a shame, because these guys were just as talented (if not more talented) than some of the more popular axe-slingers of the 80s.

And hey, since I love you dear readers so much, I decided to include a bonus guest pick from my good buddy and fellow guitar junkie, Matt Reigle!

With that said, here are four (plus one) of the most criminally underrated guitarists from the Decade of Decadence.

Reb Beach – Winger

Of all the late 80s hair metal groups who got unfairly characterized as a bunch of no-talent hacks, Winger might be the most egregious victim.

It’s a fairly famous story by now, but some combination of Beavis and Butt-head roasting their nerdy friend for wearing a Winger shirt and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich throwing darts at a picture of the hair band’s frontman Kip Winger effectively ruined any credibility the band had.

Which is a shame, because, with all due respect to the members of Metallica, whom I have a great deal of respect for, the members of Winger could play circles around them.

Chief among those talented members is guitarist Reb Beach, whose buttery smooth legato tapping runs and percussive riffs like the one from hit-single “Seventeen” made him an underground guitar god in his own right.

Unfortunately, Winger committed the mortal sins of having a pretty boy lead singer and painfully cheesy videos (even by 80s standards), so most people dismissed them and Beach as cheap imitators.

Though his time in the spotlight was brief, any of guitar-oriented hair metal knows Beach is one of the more technically accomplished shredders of his era, Mike Judge be damned.

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Their eponymous debut features some tasty licks and haunting solos and should be an immediate listen for any fans of the genre.

Akira Takasaki – Loudness

Portrait of the rock group Loudness at the Metro in Chicago, Ill., on May 28, 1985. Pictured from left are Munetaka Higuchi, Akira Takasaki, Minoru Niihara and Masayoshi Yamashita. (Getty Images)

Metal acts from far off lands was nothing new even back in the mid-80s, as fellow Axis Power Germany showed us with groups like Accept and, more importantly, Scorpions, but Japan’s Loudness filled the void of bands who melted face from the Land of the Rising Sun.

The group featured a singer who barely spoke a lick of English, so if you were looking for a hair metal act with poetic, introspective lyrics, you might want to search elsewhere (or pick a different genre entirely).

What they lacked in lyrical depth they made up for with crushing riffs and explosive solos courtesy of their fleet-fingered lead guitarist and founding member Akira Takasaki.

The first time I heard Loudness was on Satellite Radio driving back to college one weekend. The song in question was perhaps their most well-known, “Crazy Nights,” off their 1985 glam metal masterpiece “Thunder in the East.”

I was blown away by the balls on display from Takasaki’s guitar tone and immediately went home and looked the band up only to be shocked to find out they hailed from Japan.

Takasaki’s incendiary lead stylings and creative riffing likely inspired a million bedroom guitar players in Japan alone, and he has definitely influenced my tastes over the years as well.

George Lynch – Dokken

George Lynch and Don Dokken of the glam metal band Dokken perform on stage during a concert circa 1983 in San Francisco, Calif. (Getty Images)

The Sunset Strip is famous for producing hundreds of wildly talented shredders in the late 70s and early 80s, with the aforementioned Eddie Van Halen likely taking the crown as the king of Los Angeles-area guitarists from that era.

One six-stringed genius who came up right alongside Eddie was none other than George Lynch, lead guitarist extraordinaire from the hair metal band Dokken.

Dokken had everything you could want in a popular metal act in the early-to-mid 80s: a charismatic frontman, an untouchable lead guitar player, memorable songs, and catchy riffs.

The only problem is that the two principal members, Lynch and lead singer Don Dokken, absolutely despised each other, and that friction led to the band imploding right before their rocket went from “popular” to “superstars.”

Despite this, Dokken released plenty of material beloved by both guitar tech-heads and leg warmer-wearing chicks of the 80s, and Lynch etched out a spot in metal history with his blistering solo runs and deceptively heavy hooks.

Mr. Scary himself is often seen as the third head in the Sunset Strip triumvirate of himself, Van Halen and Rhoads, and anyone worth their salt in the guitar community has absolutely counted him as an influence in their playing.

Warren DeMartini – Ratt

Stephen Pearcy, left, and Warren DeMartini of RATT perform on stage at the Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, Ill., on Sept. 20, 1985. (Getty Images)

I know I’ve invoked his name quite a bit throughout this article, but Eddie Van Halen is my favorite guitarist of all-time.

He has been the most influential on my personal style of playing by far and his band is my number one by a country mile.

With all that being said, many people may be surprised to learn that my second-favorite axe-slinger is none other than Ratt’s Warren DeMartini.

The guy had it all: rip-roaring solos, creative and catchy riffs, and a cool, calm, and collected demeanor that had many tabbing him as the 1980s’ answer to Joe Perry.

DeMartini was a principal songwriter on two of Ratt’s biggest hits, “Round and Round” and “Lay It Down,” showing that he had a knack for crafting radio-friendly tunes just as much as he had a mastery of the fretboard.

Ratt had lasting popular appeal throughout the 80s, but it was always a case of the sum being more notorious than its parts, so DeMartini never got the acclaim he rightly deserved.

Their first three full-length albums, “Out of the Cellar,” “Invasion of Your Privacy” and “Dancing Undercover,” represent some of the finest pop-metal the era had to offer, and several students of the 80s guitar scene will often cite these as quasi-sacred texts from which they pull inspiration quite often.

Guest Pick (Matt Reigle): Dan Spitz – Anthrax

Danny Spitz of Anthrax performs at The Spectrum on June 29, 1991, in Philadelphia, Pa. (Getty Images)

There are plenty of guitar heroes in the Big 4 thrash metal bands like James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman, Dave Mustaine, Marty Friedman and Scott Ian.

But while Ian gets most of the attention in Anthrax due to him being the band leader and a monster rhythm player, someone had to play the leads on the band’s biggest songs like “Caught in a Mosh,” “Indians” and “Madhouse.”

That was Dan Spitz.

Spitz played on every Anthrax album from their debut, “Fistful of Metal,” to 1993’s “Sound of White Noise.”

He briefly reunited with the band in the mid-aughts, but I think he gets overlooked because he wasn’t in the band for the re-appreciation of classic thrash that came about through the 2010s.

Spitz brought some unique flavor to Anthrax.

His leads and contributions to the band’s famous forays into rap metal are huge. He was responsible for the short acoustic piece, “A.D.I.,” which serves as the intro to the song “Horror of it All.”

It’s a real change-up on the album with some really solid, Middle Eastern-inspired playing.

But I think the high-water mark is his lead on the song “Only” from “Sound of White Noise.”

It’s an absolute monster solo that can rip your face off through the first two-thirds, then shifts gears into a section with some of the most deliciously wah-soaked melodic phrasing you’ll ever hear.

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