If you’re anything like me, you probably spent an embarassingly large amount of time during your teenage years searching bargain bins for releases by Mike Varney’s Shrapnel Records, a label specialising in releases by guitar virtuosos like Marty Friedman, Racer X, Cacophony, Greg Howe and Paul Gilbert. Well those days of eagle-eyed pointy-guitar spotting amid the racks at obscure used CD stores are over, with the news that Shrapnel’s catalog has just become available on iTunes. Now you can pick up rare releases by Yngwie Malmsteen’s Steeler, Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Tony McAlpine, Greg Howe, Richie Kotzen, Vinnie Moore, and many other dudes who spent as much time on haircare as they spent on practicing 8-fingered 4-octave diminished arpeggios – and those dudes spent a lot of time on 8-fingered 4-octave diminished arpeggios.