Chuck for guitar playing but Hetfield's lyrics on the first 4 albums are legendary (in a good way).
Chuck schuldiner vs James Hetfield
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HamburgerBoy
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Death barely even has any good riffs. Solid riffs that can bring a song together on the first couple albums, but it gets tedious past that.
divine_torture
leVel
Ha.
If you can listen through all of "Human", "Individual Thought Patterns"', or "Symbolic" without finding at least 2/9 riffs interesting or satisfying, you are probably just a bad bassist in an 80's hair metal cover band.
HamburgerBoy
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Ok, admittedly I was narrowly defining "riffs" in my head to exclude a lot of the melodic inter-verse stuff that defines Death of that period. If we're counting those, fine, but they're more novelty/distractions to hide the fact that in the bulk of the songs there is little to go on. It's like Annihilator; some neat and flashy harmony sections here and there, but get into the actual song and they're actually quite dull and repetitive. Well, the intro/first verse riff to Symbolic is a great to-the-point riff. I'm sure there are a few others, but otherwise the lack of quality riffing is Death's biggest fault.
divine_torture
leVel
So...Death' riffs are generally boring and are their biggest fault...except for all those really awesome riffs that glue the songs together and are impressive? Hm.
HamburgerBoy
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I'm at home now so I can explain slightly better.
These, if we're calling them riffs (they're usually repetitive shiny lead bits), are fun bits of guitar novelty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOedlRvU_MQ#t=47s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68kfFSzms4#t=1m1s
I don't know if they technically would qualify as a riff, at least by the meaning used in casual metal forum discussion, but whatever, they're cool.
These, the actual meat-and-potatoes of the song, the verse and chorus riffs that make up a significant amount, are pretty damn boring:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umMRVrOWIng#t=9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0u56VHhczo#t=37s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOedlRvU_MQ#t=14s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls7ljTRVQmM#t=44s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68kfFSzms4#t=35s
So many of them seem to rely on just some basic thrash chugging, with a one-beat note that follows some extremely predictable progression. It's like he did just the absolute minimum so that someone could call the notes melodic, but it comes off about as interesting as, say, the chorus riff to Exodus' Impaler (which does work because it's a far more aggressive song than pretty much any 90s Death, and was written in 1982).
These, if we're calling them riffs (they're usually repetitive shiny lead bits), are fun bits of guitar novelty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOedlRvU_MQ#t=47s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68kfFSzms4#t=1m1s
I don't know if they technically would qualify as a riff, at least by the meaning used in casual metal forum discussion, but whatever, they're cool.
These, the actual meat-and-potatoes of the song, the verse and chorus riffs that make up a significant amount, are pretty damn boring:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umMRVrOWIng#t=9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0u56VHhczo#t=37s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOedlRvU_MQ#t=14s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls7ljTRVQmM#t=44s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M68kfFSzms4#t=35s
So many of them seem to rely on just some basic thrash chugging, with a one-beat note that follows some extremely predictable progression. It's like he did just the absolute minimum so that someone could call the notes melodic, but it comes off about as interesting as, say, the chorus riff to Exodus' Impaler (which does work because it's a far more aggressive song than pretty much any 90s Death, and was written in 1982).
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