Happy 50th Birthday to the hugest riff of all:
21st Century Schizoid ManPersonal favourites:
Boulder - Rage With The DeadUsed to hammer this one into the ground with my old band at rehearsals and soundchecks. Goddamn, it's fun to play! Boulder were just riff machines.
Listen to their first two LPs - it's like a breakbeat sample LP, but for smoking guitar bits.
Bad Brains - SoulcraftWhile warming up in the studio, Dr Know farts out the kind of riff that funk-metal gorons through the ages would slaughter their entire families to be able to write. A moment of brilliance on an otherwise pretty awful album.
Rorschach -
In The Year of Our Lord/
SomeoneThe 'band that kind of formed the blueprint for what Converge would be' (Kurt Ballou). The second LP - Protestant - from 1991 basically invented a new language for heavy, alternative, extreme 'metal', hardcore or whatever you want to call it, but back in 1990 Keith Huckins was churning out killer riffs for their first LP, Remain Sedate. Blew my mind at the time, and changed the way I played guitar forever.
Darkthrone - Det Svarter Na 4.10 onwards
A total 'punch a copper in the face and push folk in front of a bus' riff. Not the most complex thing in the word, but that driving D-Beat behind it carries a lot of the weight. Kaos!
Asschapel - Carcass Bloody CarcassA riff so massive it actually got me in trouble with the law (due to a drunken devil-horn/offensive gesture mix-up). Ended up in a Swedish car advert, which is a bit odd. More complicated that it sounds, too - I've watched the guitarist play it numerous times, and the spidery chord shapes he pulls do not make a lick of sense to me. I think I'd prefer not to know how to play it, tbh. Retains a sense of mystery, and thus remains one of my favourite riffs of all time.
Black Sabbath - SupernautA riff so huge it should be played by a Scottish pipe band in full regalia, which - should I have my way - is exactly what will happen at my funeral.
