The Guitarist Of The Year: 16. Chris Bishop (Crobot)

Chris Bishop and Crobot sit precariously on the fault lines of some of the 21^st century’s most dominant trends. They are unabashedly retro-rock stars serving up pounding hunks of groove-laden riffage, tinged with hints of psychedelia and plenty of prog/proto-metal expansiveness. Something Supernatural quite simply stopped Guitar Planet in its tracks: it’s rare to hear a debut album that is both so assured (cocksure in fact) and masterfully orchestrated.

“The Necromancer” might play like slick arena rock but it holds the listener in sway to a maelstrom of crashing waves as one smooth rolling, but choppily insistent groove cascades into the next. Chris Bishop displays a remarkable knack for retaining a savage jaggedness to his playing while burying his audience beneath great slabs of solid stone. By intricately toeing the line between such familiar sounds - pinching the best bits from their every influence - Crobot manage to sound like classicists and pioneers, riding each spiralling riff for all its worth.