Michael Angelo Batio — born in the United States in 1956 — has been Manowar's guitarist since 2022, and came to the band already one of the best-known figures in the world of American virtuoso guitar. His fame rests on two peculiarities. The first is being ambidextrous on the instrument: he plays fluently with his hands reversed, which almost no guitarist can do. The second follows from the first — he developed the Double Guitar, a two-necked instrument set at an angle that lets him play different lines simultaneously, one with each hand, and went as far as four-necked versions. Before Manowar he built a career mainly as a solo instrumentalist and teacher, with decades of instructional material that trained generations of guitarists. He is known less for belonging to bands than for widening what was considered physically possible on the instrument. His joining Manowar has a logic to it: in a band that treats technique, force and excess as declared virtues, a guitarist built on those same principles finds natural ground.
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