Riff Of The Week: Power Metal Edition
Warning: Riffs may contain traces of nuts and/or shellfish.
Before we get cheesy, let’s take a look at the results from last week’s Verb Edition.
This week I caved to the persistent nerds who regularly ask for a Power Metal-themed RotW. And guess what, none of them submitted anything. Fucking wimps. Anyway, we got a few entries for you to pinch your vas deferens and decide between. (Full Disclosure: I am in a shitload of pain right now and couldn’t listen to these for vetting prior to scheduling the post. Some slight self-preservation, I guess).
Positronic Brain
Category VI – ‘Reborn’ (Riff @ 0:12)
I’m not a big power metal guy, but I wanted to submit something, so I figured I’d rep some local talent from my beautiful seaside city of St. John’s, NL. Why this song? Well, the video is shot on a sweet icy cliff, there’s a lot of power metal headbangin’, there’s a female vocalist, the guitarist has a dope handlebar moustache, and the riff at 0:12, which all its little “one-guitar-doing-lead-and-rhythm” twists and turns is pretty catchy. I was on a compilation CD with these guys last year. Hi, Category VI!
Quailballs!?
Holy Grail – ‘The Blackest Night’ (Riff @ 0:05)
Try not to throw out your neck headbanging on the way to your next LARPing event.
ZMapp
Unlucky Morpheus – ‘Black Pentagram’ (Riff @ 0:00)
Ah, Ankimo. What an hard thing you’ve done… moving from a two man videogame cover band to a full fledged metal powerhouse. But it worked (unlike Thousand Leaves/Eyes). The guitars, the drums, the vocals – all work perfectly to build what I consider the best Power Metal band right now.
Howard Dean
Running Wild – ‘Riding the Storm’ (Riff @ 1:44)
Fruit that dost swing low? Mayhap. But traditional heavy metal/power metal doesn’t get much play around these parts, so the big guns gotta come out when the genre is in play for RotW. Plus Running Wild is one of my favorite bands, so go fuck yourself you sniveling arsehole!
The main riff from “Riding the Storm” is iconic and probably one of the most majestic riffs ever written. I especially like when it speeds up around the 1:50 mark. BONER.
Yarnhawk
Between the Buried and Me – ‘Aspirations’ (Riff @2:31)
You may be wondering why a lame old metalcore band is in here this week, but that’s because unbeknownst to you, BtBam was the hottest power metal band around in 2002 for about 20 seconds, thanks to this riff.
Next week your theme is BLACK. Get creative!
Submission details below.
