Yeah, I think a war is about to begin. Great topic for discussion however. I believe that after about 2 hours of live Malmsteen I would be ready to hear some peace and quite, but Hendrix, SRV, etc... I could listen to for days. Sure, Vai, Malmsteen, etc.. could shred the socks off of the old guys, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can play better. Honestly, I think metal is technically harder to play, but blues/rock is harder to create. With blues you have to put some soul into your playing. Although blues is usually based around the same old chords and progressions, you have to do something to make it different from the next guy, thats what I think gets hard. Still yet you cant say that one is better than the other, they are simply from two different musical realms. I play both styles about equally, and I still find myself asking this same question every single day.