Your confusing contribution with raw talent. Hammet has influenced generations of guitarists. Half the folks you named I've never heard of. Others like Malmsteen while increadibly talented add nothing to any genre. Hammett didn't invent the modern Metal style but Metalica popularized it. They were the one group that had lasting success out of a whole wave of Metal groups to emerge in the late 70s early 80s. Most of them faded out before the late 80s. Metalica just got better. In any genre there are folks out there who are extremely talented but who also don't have either any songwriting skills and or do a poor job of playing with a band. With Primus for example. Les Claypool can play circles around most bass players. However he hogs the sound so badly that it's not a band, it's Les Claypool and the other guys. No give or take, which is why Primus is a sidenote if that much. Their top hit was a cover. 20 years from now I doubt anybody will know who Claypool was. Geezer Butler on the other hand has influenced generations of bass players including Claypool. In short how fast you can play means nothing. The only people who care if your faster, have massive technical difficulty are other musicians usually younger musicians. Al Demoli can run scales at lightning speed, so? Malmsteen can pull off some increadibly difficult stuff but in the end it is souless. It sounds dead and is one long ego trip. Technique for the sake of technique is to take your gifts and squander them. The whole point of technical expertise is that you can do something melodically for the sake of the song, not write a song to spotlight what you can do technically. That whole shred for the sake of shredding is what killed Metal in the 80s. There are only so many young aspiring guitarists to buy those LPs and go to those shows. The rest of the Rock world turned to Grunge, which as often as not had no guitar solo. If your not only a guitarist but a fairly good one you have no idea just how difficult many shredding techniques are and even if you do, if it don't sound good it don't sound good. All music must pass through that test. Does it sound good? If so it's music. If not it's noise. The spotlight goes to he who writes the best music. You have to listen to a song to appreciate the technical difficulty of it. If the music isn't good then all the talent in the world isn't going to get you known as anything more than a circus freak who does tricks for a living. Music has always been about the passion, the art of it. Betray that and you kill everything your trying to do and most of the shredders lose sight of that essential element of music.