MSD & Friends’ RIFF OF THE WEEK 9/20/14
You guys gave me like a billion fucking riffs this week.
A handsome man with a giant brain and many other admirable qualities once told me that “there’s no such thing as too many riffs.” It was me. I told that to myself while deep in contemplative thought, deciding whether or not I should use every riff you guys and gals submitted this week. Did I do anything yesterday besides compiling these? Should I have written my critical review on Alzheimer’s and the breakdown of the myelin sheath instead? The answers are no and yes, respectively. Because I care about the toilet and everyone floating around in it. Even you, Guest.
Last week, Pagliacci is Kvlt’s Neurosis baaaarely edged out Tyree’s Dissection. His week of gamboling about as Riff Lord is over now, unless he can come out on top of this METRIC SHIT TON of riffs, which – and I can’t stress this enough – were a royal pain in my royal SteelAss.
Listen up and vote (for me)!
Masterlord SteelDragon
Necrovation‘s s/t was one of the best death metal albums of 2012 and appropriately full of deadly riffage. The slimy black slog starts at 1:17. Headbang until your brain turns into black slime and spills from your eye holes. Stick around long enough and it’ll lead into a pretty nasty solo.
Joe Thrashnkill
The Mammoth Grinder riff I submitted last week didn’t win and I’m still salty about it because that song crushes. So I’m stepping up this arms race even further with the opening riff from Admiral Angry‘s “Kill Yourself”. Mosh yourself to death.
W
I’m a slave to the grind, and the one that kicks off at about 2:34 is a neck wrecker.
Leif Bearikson
We all know the country riff in Mastodon‘s “Megalodon.” It gets me pumped every time because it is just such a weirdly perfect transition from the punky chord progression at the start of the song into the thrash madness of the back end. Every time Brent Hinds hits that final note, I inhale deeply and prepare my soul for the fury that is about to be unleashed.
Christian Molenaar
If you know anything about metal you know exactly what riff I’m talking about. If you don’t…
Randall Thor
This song is a roller coaster to the riff filled land. After the exploratory riff of the beginning, we get our first taste of the riffage to come in the form of a clean passage outlining the basic chord progressions of the song. Then at 2:20, we kick it up a notch with some distortion. After a contemplative survey of the rising entropy surrounding you, the song suddenly picks it up at 3:31, with a guitar solo grasping our hand and racing us towards our destination. A soul invigorating riff of ginormous proportions washes over us at 3:48, carrying us through the wastes followed by explosions, gunfire, and leather clad warriors.
Howard Dean
“I tackled him from behind and somehow got around behind him and slit his throat. And I remember him saying, ‘please don’t kill me.’ And that’s when I realized, oh my god, what am I doing? I-I said, ‘wha- whatever is done is already been done.’ And I think, you know, by this time, I-I totally wigged out, and, uh, I-I pulled his brain out, and uh, took a bite out of it.” 7:39.
Tyree
Leave it to Jesse Pintado a.k.a. The Grindfather to come up with an awesome grind riff. The first riff to “After Life in Purgatory” has a sense of melancholy to it, but it also crushes at the same time. It’s catchy as all hell too. R.I.P. Grindfather.
Edward Meehan
The sixth track from The Dillinger Escape Plan‘s Miss Machine features frantic mathcore and their brand of Mike Patton-esque pop leanings, but check out the straightforward, crushing riff that begins at 3:34. Well they said we’d tear ourselves apart. Turns out, they were right.
Pagliacci is Kvlt
Since my RotW last week was kind of a bummer, I’m going with something more positive this week. I had no idea where/what Absecon Isle was until I looked it up before writing this (I swear!), and I’ll tell you where it is when I’m done. There’s a few great riffs in this song, but for the sake of picking one I’ll go with the riff that starts at 1:48. There’s a certain “dreamyness” to this song that imparts a sort of canival or amusement park atmosphere and joyous memories fun times past. The riff in question “feels” like riding a carnival ride. In my mind, this song always evoked not just fond memories of the small, local amusement parks of my childhood that are now long gone, such as Angela Park (Drums, PA) or Rocky Glen Park (Moosic, PA), but memories of stories told by friends and family of now defunct amusement parks from their childhood. In particular, and both with an island/water connection, Bertrand’s Island (Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey) which I can remember my cousins always talking about when I was a little kid, and Hanson’s Amusement Park (Harvey’s Lake, PA) of which my friend Rob from college would tell me about the merry-go-round his father owned there and he inherited. So…where/what IS Absecon Isle? It’s the barrier island that Atlantic City, NJ is build on. I guess my interpretation of the song was not too far off.
Boz
A track from an album most Entombed fans wouldn’t call their favorite, but this riffage murders with enough evil and tone to make you wanna fight a dude, then take his lady afterwards. Point of riff – all of it.
365 Days of Horror
The riff at 3:57 sounds just like the intro from the 90’s X-Men cartoon.
SheWölf
The Wiiiizzaaaarrrddd… What can I say? This riff will steamroller your face. And in true EW fashion, it’s pretty much the entire song.
Deputy Dipshit
The guitar tone alone on this album gives me such an ear boner, but that chewing, grindy riff at 1:12 of this song, Suffocation bring it to a full on aural climax and proceed to shred the last bit of love juice out of me. It makes me want to walk through the streets of New York spinning around in a tornado of fists, like Haggar’s Double Lariat in Final Fight.
Guacamole Jim
This song is one of my absolute favorite modern rock compositions. At 8:20 a short buildup kicks in which quickly releases its tension in a majestic torrent that is clearly the crowning point of the entire piece. If you have time, I strongly encourage you to listen to the full track to truly be able to understand the depth of emotion that the riff captures.
MoshOff
0:28. If you don’t move to dat groove, I don’t want to know you(ve). I didn’t remember Epica ever sounding like this, so I double checked. They didn’t. Apparently their new bassist used to be in Exivious, so that might have something to do with this album tickling my fancy.
Cock of Steele
The riff starts right off the bat and doesn’t stop till the song is over, and guess what, it was recorded in 1959! This is the reason Link Wray is one of my favorite guitarists. Elvis freaked people out with his hips, Link Wray freaked people out because of the way his guitar sounded. And we can all thank him for it, because rock music would be in a whole different place had it not been for Mr. Link fuckin’ Wray.
RuIN?
Going back to this. The 1:07 mark is a good example of these dudes doing it well. Harmonizing like a couple of bad asses
Johnny Crunch
The riff @ 4.33. Thanks to one of our fellow flushers, they know who they are!
Renan
After 15 seconds working up the beat of the song, this Portland band knocks down the door and the whole building along with it.
NDNOvHell
Bay Area Thrashers Vio-Lence. A song about life in the bighouse, is full of killer riffs. My favorite begins at the 0:31 mark. Upon hearing it I immediately want to put my fist through car windows, or stagedive off the nearest building. I’m a big guy, so that would hurt quite a bit.
Nordling Rites Ov Karhu
Just press play and roam the night, through infinite space with this riff that opens Kuolemanlaakso‘s Me Vaellamme Yössä.
crazytaco_12
In an effort to get some more thrash love into the toilet, I nominate Obliveon‘s “Factory of Delusions”. The intro and verse riff are both insanely tempting calls for ROTW, but I think 1:44 is really where headbanging becomes fully mandatory.
TEST YOUR MIGHT
