Acoustic heavy metal music by Rodrigo Y Gabriela

This music video is called Stairway to Heaven live (Rodrigo y Gabriela).

From British daily The Morning Star:

A melodic Metallica

(Friday 14 December 2007)

LIVE: Rodrigo Y Gabriela
Hammersmith Apollo, London W6

CAT DACE wonders what you get when you cross flamenco and metal and finds the answer in an intriguing Mexican guitar duo.

Have you ever heard of flamenco metal? Could you ever imagine it?

Well, if you’ve ever heard Rodrigo y Gabriela, then you’d know that it takes their amount of skill and balls to pull it off.

Armed with two acoustic guitars and their heads full of dreams, the two Mexicans, who met in Mexico City while playing in a thrash metal band, made their way to Europe and gradually won the hearts and minds of scores of diverse fans. After playing a top slot at Glastonbury Festival this year, they don’t even have to advertise their British gigs, which sell out almost immediately.

But what of the music? The duo are famous for playing acoustic, Latin-tinged covers of rock and metal classics. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? But, using just two acoustic guitars, Rodrigo y Gabriela manage to create a technically brilliant, elaborate and downright massive sound.

Complex finger-picking melts into all-out strumming as the duo build from lulling Latin to full-blown, head-banging rock in the space of five minutes, taking the crowd with them all the way.

Rodrigo plays with astounding speed and dexterity and his technical brilliance as a guitarist is hard to equal. But it is Gabriela who truly drives the music. Her creativity with her instrument is a joy to watch. She uses the whole guitar – slapping and caressing the strings with breathtaking dexterity and banging out a rhythm on the wood with each finger after the other, moving between the two so quickly that the entire lower half of her arm becomes a blur. You really have to see it to believe it.

By the time that the opening chords to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin ring throught the venue, the entire crowd is in a frenzy. And, as this spectacular show draws to an end with a cover of Metallica‘s Orion, the ultimate compliment is paid to them by a long-haired, leather jacket-wearing fan standing behind me. “They’re better than Metallica,” he whispers to himself under his breath.

See also here.