Riff Of The Week: Good Riff From A Bad Album Edition

March 2, 2019

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Riffs from Metallica, Vektor, Carcass, Morbid Angel, Malthusian, Blood Ceremony, and Good Charlotte.

Before we get to this week’s comp let’s look at the results from last week’s Dust Edition. As anticipated, winner of the 2017 Album ov the Year & 2017 Riff ov the Year, Suffering Hour‘s ‘The Abrasive Black Dust’ blew away the field yet again with a near 50% of the vote. Good.

This week I asked for good riffs from bad albums.
Here’s what you sent in…

GoatForest
Metallica – “Sweet Amber” (Riff @ 1:00)

You want a bad album? This one of big daddies of the stinkers. Metallica shit the bed so hard on this one, the metal world had to codemn the building.
That being said, this riff is some excellent bluesy goodness. “Sweet Amber” is a shining gold nugget in the sea of liquid diarrhea that is St. Anger.

tigeraid
Metallica – ‘Prince Charming’ (Riff @ 0:25)

Yeah okay, I’ll bite. I’ve never HATED the Load/Reload albums, but firmly believe they could’ve just made one good Black Album-ish compilation out of them both. Main riff begins at 0:25. Good driving tune.

GrumpDumpus
Vektor – ‘Cygnus Terminal’ (Riff @ 3:26)

YOU READ THAT RIGHT YOU ARE STARING AT A GOOD RIFF ON A BAD ALBUM VEKTOR’S BREAD AND BUTTER-FLAVORED WHEELHOUSE

OBSERVE THE OTHERWORLDLY AGGRESSION THAT IS BOTH CAPTIVATING AND MYSTIFYING AT THE VERSE RIFF AT 3:26 WHICH SEEMS TO PULL YOU INTO THE STELLAR PAINTING OF GALACTIC DRAMA WHICH IS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED UP BY A TEPID GUITAR EXERCISE WANKED WITH THE FURTIVE SUBTLETY OF A 13 YEAR OLD WHO SAW A BOOB IF ONLY VEKTOR-BROS INC. LEARNED TO RESTRAIN THEIR ADMIRATION OF DREAM THEATER AND TRIMMED THE JARRINGLY PRETENTIOUS BLOAT WE COULD HAVE HAD ONE OF THE BEST 35 MINUTE THRASH ALBUMS OF THE MILLENIUM BUT INSTEAD WE GET AN ASTONISHING 80 MINUTES OF SUCKS ASS THAT ONLY LORD NAFARYUS COULD LOVE

Hans
Good Charlotte – ‘A New Beginning’ (Riff @ 0:36)

Mind you, this isn’t actually a great riff, but it’s effective enough, and coming from these dudes, and in combination with those Tim Burton-ass synths, it’s an unexpected flash of brilliance. To be honest, I haven’t even heard this record, but I have no reason to believe it’s any less shitty than the band’s other output (the comments on the video largely agree, for once).

weseelbr
Morbid Angel – ‘Nevermore’ (Riff at 0:25)

I remember hearing Morbid Angel playing this song live in 2008. I thought it sounded like something that could have been on Blessed Are The Sick and was really looking forward to the new album coming out. Little did I know….

Howard Deanzig
Blood Ceremony – “Oliver Haddo” (Organ/Guitar Riff @ 5:51)

I tried really hard to love Blood Ceremony. I bought their debut s/t album in the fall of 2008 based on the cover art alone. For a good stretch of time I was infatuated with The Devil’s Blood (still one of my favorite bands), and I thought Blood Ceremony would be a decent analog. It didn’t work, though. For whatever reason, it just never clicked. The flute always kinda threw me off, and I always seemed to get super bored or something. So I wasn’t a huge fan of the debut, but tried again with the follow up album, Living with the Ancients, and liked it even less. However, there were a couple tracks emphasizing an organ that were OK, and one absolutely hellish and fucking awesome organ/guitar riff that made me shit my pants. I played the last ~two minutes of this track on repeat for a few weeks and will occasionally still have this riff pop into my head at random times. Organ starts at 5:51, guitars come in at 6:00, and the whole thing just repeats and knocks your socks off for a couple minutes. Stellar.

Megachiles
Carcass- ‘Keep On Rotting In The Free World’ (Riff @ 2:12)

Description: My wife thinks Go To Hell has the best riff on this fairly mediocre album but she’s wrong, because it doesn’t have a thick n’ tasty cowbell riff at ~2:12.

Lacertilian
Malthusian – ‘Across The Expanse Of Nothing’ (Riff @ 3:18)

Was such a shame this record was such an underwrought and incohorent mess after the powerful work on Below The Hengiform. While it may have suffered from an improvised-sounding approach to not only riff-writing but also song-structuring, exascerbated by slipshod ‘live’ sounding production, there are a couple of redeeming riffs which sometimes crop up. Some of them even get repeated once or twice. As I said upon release, don’t tell Richter.

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