Behold the rapid-fire style that laid the groundwork for modern death metal.
Chops: Advanced
Theory: Intermediate
Lesson Overview:
• Understand the intricacies of the old-school death-metal scene.
• Learn how to get the tones of bands like Entombed, Dismember, and Grave.
• Improve your tremolo picking. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
In this lesson, we’re going back to Sweden for a look at some brutal, old-school death-metal riffs. A while back we explored the Gothenburg style, which is a bit more modern. The metal sounds we’ll discuss this time was forged by bands in and around Stockholm, and occasionally this style has borrowed that name.
These bands emerged a few years before the Gothenburg scene developed and were a massive influence on the melodic death-metal genre. However, being influenced by crust punk and grindcore, these outfits have a raw aggressive sound that is supported by the now legendary “buzzsaw” guitar tone. Often this would include a dimed Boss HM-2 into a clean solid-state amp, but slightly pushed British amps could work well, too. This sound in combination with heavily detuned guitars is absolutely essential to get an authentic Swedish death-metal guitar tone. Most bands tuned down to B standard while some have also used C tuning. The all-star group Bloodbath even go as low as A. After Entombed pioneered this sound with their 1990 album Left Hand Path, such other bands as Dismember, Grave, and Unleashed adopted it and put their own spin on it.
While having a massive influence on the Gothenburg scene in the early ’90s, these bands made a particular impact on contemporary grindcore bands that use the famous HM-2 guitar tone, like Rotten Soundand Nasum, as well as such U.S. metallic hardcore bands as Full of Hell, Trap Them, and Black Breath.
Ex. 1 is reminiscent of Entombed’s first two albums, which originated the style as we know it now. It’s a grooving mid-tempo riff that uses syncopations and power chords from the B half-whole diminished scale (B–C–D–Eb–F–Gb–Ab) that are played against the palm-muted open-6th string. These type of riffs are found all over Left Hand Path and 1991’s Clandestine, after which Entombed turned towards a somewhat more rock-influenced sound, thus creating another subgenre known as death ’n’ roll.
Click here for Ex. 1
Ex. 2 shows this death ’n’ roll approach. It’s a single-note riff based around the B blues scale (B–D–E–F–F#–A) that’s enhanced with a few passing tones to generate more tension. Entombed created the sound of their third album, Wolverine Blues, by combining this type of riff with death metal riffs like the previous one, while maintaining the grinding HM-2 tone.
Click here for Ex. 2
Ex. 3 shows a punk influence and is in the style of Dismember,who tend to mix these d-beat/crust rhythms—alternating eighth- and quarter-notes—with short melodic lines. Harmonically, the riff uses notes from C minor, but adds a b2.
Click here for Ex. 3
The tremolo-picked riff in Ex. 4 is also reminiscent of Dismember and starts out in C minor with an added b5 for extra tension and evilness. During the second half of the riff, I move the same scale shape down to Bb minor while retaining the C on the 6th string. It comes out sounding somewhere between Phrygian and Locrian due to the b5. But don’t think about the theory too much: This riff is based on a visual approach where the scale shape is moved around to where it sounds cool—there really is no theory involved in the writing process.
Click here for Ex. 4
Another approach to tremolo picking pops up in Ex. 5. Here, I pick each note twice, so every pickstroke coincides with a drum hit. This creates a machine gun-like effect during the blast beats, and the technique is often used when the song is too fast to be played in double-time on the guitar. This example demonstrates the “pick twice” approach using the style of the Viking-themed band, Unleashed. The sound I associate most with them is also based on a partially chromatic visual shape that is counterpointed by the open 6th string. The intervals move in minor seconds, tritones, and fourths. The shape shifts in minor thirds before ending in the first position. This sound is found in many old Unleashedsongs.
Click here for Ex. 5
Ex. 6 continues with this sound, but in a slower, more grooving riff. We see the same shape being moved in fourths this time, but it’s a slow melody that’s opposed by syncopated, staccato power chords in the first half of the riff. Such groovy staccato riffs are also typical of Unleashed.
Click here for Ex. 6
Moving on to the last band in today’s lesson, Ex. 7 is a mid-tempo riff in the style of Grave. There are a few different accents that can work along with the drums to give the riff a different feel. Harmonically, we find the same B diminished scale we used before. Another Grave trademark: The riff is played in two different iterations. The first one uses power chords and muted single-notes to create a more syncopated feel, while the other one uses the same notes and note placement within the bar, but features a constant 16th-note line.
Click here for Ex. 7
Grave also tends to change between straight and triplet feels within the same riff. Ex. 8 begins with a fast tremolo-picked section before going into a triplet feel that combines power chords with 16th-note triplets and eighth-notes with eighth-note triplets. This creates very unpredictable and interesting riffs that still follow the same pulse despite mixing different rhythmic feels in the guitar.
Click here for Ex. 8
What’s more evil-sounding than the Devil’s interval?
Theory: Intermediate
Lesson Overview:
• Learn how to play repetitive riffs at a breakneck speed.
• Combine different rhythmic feels to create syncopated guitar parts.
• Understand how to stack tritones to make dark, sinister-sounding riffs. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
Florida's Hate Eternal have been around for many years and have evolved their style and production with every album. Mastermind, vocalist, and guitarist Erik Rutan, who previously played in Morbid Angel, is also a producer and owner of Mana Recording Studios. While the influence that Morbid Angel had on him is undeniable, and particularly present on the 7-string songs from their latest album, Upon Desolate Sands, his style is unmistakable. It's dissonant and often layered and counterpointed by aggressive blast beats at blistering speeds. The production often favors the drums over the guitars and immediately puts a huge grin of disbelief on the face of any extreme metal fan. Hate Eternal are audibly rooted in Florida death metal but play it in a contemporary style that sounds unlike any other band and shies away from current trends.
Hate Eternal have influenced bands like Vitriol and helped to establish unresolved dissonant sounds and counterpoint guitar parts in extreme metal. In my opinion, they are the very essence of contemporary death metal.
Erik Rutan favors B.C. Rich guitars, mainly two custom Ironbirds that are tuned to C# with a Seymour Duncan SH-5 Duncan Custom bridge pickup and a Bill Lawrence L500 in the neck. He gets his crushing guitar tones from a Marshall JCM800 and Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier which he boosts with various pedals like the Maxon OD808, OD808X, and TS9 Pro+. As with most contemporary death metal however, you can get away with simply a high-output humbucker into a boosted high-gain tube amp.
Ex. 1 is a relatively fast riff that demonstrates a foundational element in Rutan's playing. He almost completely avoids power chords in favor of octave dyads and stacked tritones. (A tritone is an interval of three whole-steps—hence its name. It divides the octave in half and creates an augmented fourth or diminished fifth.)
In this case, the fast succession of dyads is played with slides that give the riff a chaotic and slurry feel while still sounding somewhat defined; the stacked tritones add the typical dissonance that is so prevalent in Rutan's playing.
Click here for Ex. 1
Ex. 2 features an extensive use of stacked tritones—another trademark of Rutan's style. Instead of typical root-5 power chords, Rutan plays a series of four-note chords comprising two tritones stacked on top of each other. We then move these tritone chords around in thirds before adding some chromaticism. In the second half of the riff, the guitars veer off into different rhythms to create some interesting counterpoint.
Click here for Ex. 2
Ex. 3 also makes use of stacked tritones in combination with slides at a very high tempo. This riff is inspired by the noisy, chaotic verse in “Hell Envenom" from the Fury and Flames album. These types of riffs are often completely drowned out and serve mostly to add to the wall of noise already created by the ferocious drumming.
Click here for Ex. 3
Reaching into higher registers, Ex. 4 illustrates a counterpoint guitar line that's typical of Hate Eternal. It moves down the fretboard before ending with both guitars creating an arrhythmic harmony effect. Gtr. 1's higher melody moves in minorseconds and tritones, while Gtr. 2 plays a harmony part that moves between minor second, minor seventh, and tritone harmonies. What makes these lines compelling is that harmonic changes are created by moving the melody lines independently: One line stays static while the other creates different harmonies before reversing roles. This effect works best if both guitars are panned hard to left and right.
Click here for Ex. 4
A “slower" riff that mixes triplets with tremolo-picked tritones, Ex. 5 is a rather simple idea that moves chromatically. Notice how the tritones keep within the same shape as the stacked tritones in our previous examples. These riffs are often used for bridge parts or intro riffs.
Click here for Ex. 5
The riff in Ex. 6 alternates our stacked tritone shape with a chugging low 6th string. Riffs like this are similar to what you might hear in the verse section of the band's “I, Monarch" or “Hunting Abound." While going higher up the fretboard, the chords don't alternate with an open string, but with a chord a major second below.
Click here for Ex. 6
A breakdown riff, Ex. 7 combines a repeating 32-note rhythmic pattern that's broken up by octave dyads with a short burst of stacked tritones.
Click here for Ex. 7
Ex. 8 closes out this lesson with a rapid-fire shred lick. There's no rhythm guitar underneath—both guitars play this lead simultaneously. The figure is a ripping melody that moves chromatically and ends with an ear-piercing measure of notes at the 24th fret, while Gtr. 2 plays a harmony. This type of lead doesn't serve as a guitar solo but rather as a twisted, extreme death-metal version of the type of melodic harmony Iron Maiden are famous for.
Click here for Ex. 8
Discover how such bands as Death, Decide, and Morbid Angel crafted a singular sound that influenced legions of extreme-metal bands.
Chops: Intermediate
Theory: Intermediate
Lesson Overview:
• Learn how to craft warp-speed riffs that combine octaves, tremolo picking, and chromaticism.
• Improve your alternate picking technique.
• Understand how to work chromatics into virtually any riff.
Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
In this installment of Mort, we are going back to the beginnings of death metal in the mid ’80s in humid Florida. Mostly based in Tampa, the bands from the Florida scene built the foundation of their music on European and American thrash metal and then took it to new extremes. Due to the thematic focus on death, decay, and horror movie-style violence, this new style was first played in its defining form by Death, Deicide, Morbid Angel, and Obituary.
Possessed are cited by many fans to be the first death metal band to use the genre’s name in a song—specifically “Death Metal” from the 1985 album Seven Churches. In my opinion, Possessed sounds too much like thrash metal to qualify for this distinction, yet the tendencies towards what would become death metal are clearly there, and that made them one of the most important influences on the then-emerging Florida scene.
After this first wave of bands started to pick up steam across the country, other death metal bands began to flock to Tampa, which was considered the epicenter of the scene. Specifically, Morrisound Recording quickly became the go-to studio for Scott Burns, the producer who played a significant role in creating the Florida death metal sound. Most of today’s more extreme metal styles such as black metal, metalcore, and djent can in some way be traced back to the Sunshine state.
Most of the bands have evolved over the years—some more than others—so I’ll focus on the early years of the Florida scene and discuss some of the elements used by the four aforementioned pioneering bands on their earlier genre-defining albums. As this is an overview, I’ll inevitably leave out more than I'd like to, but this lesson will give you some tools to help you achieve an old-school death metal sound.
For starters, I’d recommend an amp like a Marshall Valvestate 8100, which Death had been known to use throughout their career. These amps might have a bad reputation within contemporary metal circles, but for the scooped, sludgy sound of those early death metal albums, they work great. Other good options would be Marshall JCM800s and older Mesa/Boogie models. We’re looking for loads of gain combined with a high-output humbucker.
Note: In this lesson, all the examples are notated as if they’re in standard tuning, although for the audio clips, I’ve tuned down a half-step or whole-step for sonic authenticity. If you want to play along, simply look at the upper left-hand tuning instructions in each example’s tab and music notation.
Okay, let’s dive in. Ex. 1 is a mid-tempo riff in the style of Obituary, who are the least “technical” of the Florida bands and are known for their groove-oriented playing. It’s a simple riff that uses tremolo picking on the open 6th string that’s intersected by some quarter- and eighth-note power chords. Harmonically, it’s somewhat based around E Phrygian (E–F–G–A–B–C–D), but adds the 3 and a b5 right before the riff repeats. (The formula for Phrygian is 1–b2–b3–4–5–b6–b7, relative to the parallel major scale.) The use of the 3 and b5 in a Phrygian context is quite popular among thrash metal, old-school death metal, and even contemporary hardcore bands. The last measure features a syncopated rhythm for the chord changes that consists of two punctuated quarter-notes and one regular quarter-note. This rhythm can be found in many Obituary songs. It’s sometimes played with open chords, like in this example, but is also combined with tremolo picking where the notes change on the “and” of beat 2 and beat 4.
Click here for Ex. 1
Ex. 2 is a sludgy riff that’s typical of Obituary’s slower songs. Again, the riff is centered around E Phrygian, but with a natural 2 in the last measure. Note the use of the inverted power chords, which let you play a power chord on the 5th string while retaining the thick sound of the 6th string. There’s also an added level of dissonance due to the use of a fourth instead of a fifth. Moving power chords in tritone intervals using inversions is very common in Obituary riffs. It’s part of their typical sound, as is the simple rhythm that alternates between 16th-notes and eighth-notes.
Click here for Ex. 2
With Ex. 3, we move into Morbid Angelterritory. The band’s sound has been described by fans as a stream of lava because of how they play at relatively high speeds. This riff uses a lot of tremolo-picked 16th-notes at 210 bpm (!) and only a few power chords and octave dyads, which is one of their trademarks, for rhythmic accents. Since the riff stays on each tremolo-picked section for a couple of beats, it creates a rather static feeling, especially if combined with a fast double-bass drum and a snare that accents the power chords and dyads. Make sure to properly palm-mute the tremolo parts—this enhances the feeling of the riff.
Click here for Ex. 3
Ex. 4 gets slow and heavy with a riff comprising octaves, power chords, and palm-muted single notes. Harmonically we are in E minor with some added chromatic notes, the typical use of the 3 in a generally minor context and the b2 at the end of the last measure adds a little Phrygian flavor. The important thing in this riff is the phrasing. The dyads ring out longer and you slide into the first one from a half step below. Morbid Angel were one of the first extreme metal bands to utilize these octaves in slow riffs like this one adding an eerie vibe to their sound. The chromatic power chords use slides to create a slurry effect that is another trademark of Morbid Angel guitarist Trey Azagthoth’s unique style.
Click here for Ex. 4
Ex. 5 explores the style of Death—a band that has not only pioneered the genre as a whole, but also lead the way for more progressive styles before mastermind Chuck Schuldiner sadly lost his battle with cancer in 2001. The riff is a slower and based on a triplet rhythm that sounds like the chorus to one of Death’s earlier songs. The riff is loosely in E minor, but the chromatic ideas make it a bit ambiguous. The alternation between rhythmic accents, held quarter-note power chords, and tremolo picking is also common on early Death albums.
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In Ex. 6, we have a faster Death-style riff. A typical harmonic move that Schuldiner used in his early recordings is playing two major thirds a half-step apart. Here, they occur as descending melodic major thirds (based on A–C# and G#–B# intervals—the latter written enharmonically as G#–C) that are split apart by a short 16th-note burst on the 6th string. Using F#5 as a theoretical target, the figure starts the major third movement on the 5 of the power chord and then moves down a half-step while being played against the insistent, recurring F#. This is quite typical of Chuck Schuldiner’s riffs from that era.
The second part consists of a tremolo pattern with rhythmic eighth-note accents on the 5 of the power chord of the moment (F# accenting B5, A accenting D5, G# accenting C#5, and E#—enharmonically written as F—accenting A#5). This figure is a signature pattern that can be found in many Deathsongs.
Click here for Ex. 6
The last band we’ll look at in this lesson is Deicide. Ex. 7 is a triplet-groove riff inspired by the band’s early work. Even though it’s rather chromatic, we’re using E as the tonal center. Pay particular attention to the sound of the figure on the first two beats of each measure. You’ll find it in many Deicide songs in different rhythmic variations, but it’s always a descending minor second followed by a descending major third. You can move this figure around chromatically and even shift it to different sets of strings.
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Ex. 8 shows a fast tremolo picking riff using the chromatic scale. Deicide’sguitar duo of that time, Eric and Brian Hoffman, liked to move chromatic patterns to different sets of strings using the same frets. Here, the chromatic movement going from B to Bb at the end of measure two is moved to the 6 string (Gb to F) at the end of measure four.
In this example, I combined this idea with the Hoffmans’ fondness of rhythmic displacement—especially in tremolo picking riffs. While the riff is in 4/4, it features groupings of two and three notes with accents occurring in the form of larger interval jumps or changes from ascending to descending groupings.