Reflecting on a bumper year for metal guitar via four standout moments to get you inspired over the break
It’s been another brilliant year for metal. Knocked Loose brought gut-wrenching heavy music to mainstream TV, Opeth started growling again and Metallica didn’t release any more music. It couldn’t have gotten any better, really.
Beyond that, there have been some phenomenally inventive new releases from bands both great and small, and some new hot shot players have caught the eye, too.
To celebrate another neck-snapping year of riffs and shred, I’ve compiled what are, for me, four stand out guitar moments from across the year so that, in-between gorging on chocolate and forgetting what day it is, the no-man’s-land period between Christmas and New Year brings a little inspiration to the MMA community.
Leprous do more with less
Alice In Chains’ Check My Brian is, in my opinion, one of the greatest metal riffs ever – it’s certainly one of the most underrated. Jerry Cantrell has proved just how effective it can be to do less with more, bending one fret to produce a grinding riff that sounds like a lawnmower feasting on its prey. It’s genius.
Leprous’ guitar duo of Tor Oddmund Suhrke and Robin Ognedal has seemingly taken the essence of that riff and given it their own Je ne sais quoi. Latest LP Melodies of Atonement sees the band stripping away their extraneous symphonic layers to focus on each member’s individualism.
As such, there are rumbling eight-string moments aplenty from Suhrke’s Aristides, while Ognedal’s Stratocaster tones and more vintage influences shine elsewhere. But it’s Atonement’s centrepiece riff that stands above the rest.
Two notes attacked with a real venom and bite atop a beastly hip hop backbeat, it shows that stank face riffs don’t always have to be about super low tunings and blunt force trauma. Malmsteen will tell you that “more is more,” but that isn’t always the case.
Dante Swan's tasteful shred
By now, it feels like nearly every possible combination of genre melding has been tried and tested, for better or for worse. Yet, with his trap-meets-shreddy-djent blend, Abasi Concepts’ latest signature artist Dante Swan proves that there is still more to explore.
Djent, he says, is his primary genre of choice, but his Spotify Wrapped includes nu jazz, R&B, and electronic music in equal measure and it shows on Eyeless.
His trap influences sees him writing very loop-based song structures, while emphasising plenty of space in his lead lines to ensure that groove holds dominion over virtuosity. That space is crucial. It’s main hook is quite flashy, but the pauses and breaks give it a wonderfully stuttering groove that stop it becoming a bland whirlwind of technicality.
He thinks in intervals too, helping guide its melodious opening licks with plenty of complimenting and contrasting colours so that each lick comes and goes with the right amount of spice. For me, Swan is one of the most inventive and unique players around. Sure, other players might be able the shred him under the table, few guitarists pack as much personality into their music as he does.
Allt – Ephemeral
Swedish thall-bringers Allt have been quietly building a pretty formidable reputation in recent years, and with a little help from Buster Odeholm, who produced the record, their stock has hit meteoric heights thanks to new record, From The New World.
We've already written a blog looking at their clever, modern-minding songwriting and what lessons we can take from that, which you can check out here. One of the biggest takeaways from their music is just how smart they are at re-imagining ideas in different ways.
We guitarists can fall foul of stapling riffs together and calling them songs, forgetting to weave in underlying motifs or chord progressions. You know, things that make songs songs. Allt are not so silly; Ephemeral is a masterclass in redressing its core motif in different garbs throughout.
From the spinning nylon acoustics of its intro to devious thall breakdowns and menacing, about-to-kick-your-head-in verse variants and handing the reigns over to epic strings in it latter stages, the band are very smart with just one idea. It allows them to employ a plethora of dynamics across the track, without bloating it with too many riffs. Like fish and chips, so often the best meals only have a few ingredients, and the same applies to modern metal songwriting. It’s sleek and devastatingly diverse in the same breath.
Viral breakdowns
In the era of social media and attention spans shorter than a goldfish’s memory, a slew of bands have found a hack: Meme-able breakdowns.
Of course, it would be a hollow thing to write a song solely for a 10-second solo media clip, but weaving in a moment into a song that is primed for reels is a shrewd marketing move that many bands have capitalised on in 2024.
Architects’ dropping a cash register ping before going hell-for-leather on Seeing Red – which released late last year – is an obvious example. Many bands have grabbed the concept and ran with it since.
Bleed From Within bolstered their brutality with bagpipes on their latest single, In Place of Your Halo. Somehow, the world’s worst instrument is a masterful, droning touch on the song. Berlin's Vianoa, self-described as angry dance music, meanwhile sprinkled a sweet, angelic harp glissando among the punches, spin kicks and scratching guitars that mark the breakdown of Más Rápido.
If you’re a fan of band’s like the Dillinger Escape Plan and Periphery, this is a band of eccentrics that you’re sure to fall in love with, and the fact that I came across the band because of a reel shows that there is method in their very mad madness.
Then there’s Suffocate from the kings of adrenalized violence, Knocked Loose. Apparently, their Jimmy Kimmel performance of the song was so heavy children cried, demons were summoned and Donald Trump won an election amid the fallout.
Chug chug "SUFFOCATE!" has since become iconic thanks to the Latin vibes that flavoured what followed, giving the primal breakdown an interesting tang. The snare sound, which is everything Ulrich's St Anger snare was not, doesn’t hurt either.
With all these examples, the songs around the ‘memes’ all stand on their own two feet. But, like just having one Pringle – or one Celebration, to keep it topically timely – that rush leaves you wanting me, revisiting the song/tub/tube. Of course, the idea can’t be shoehorned into any old song, but that blend of solid songwriting and a little silliness/uniqueness can go a long way into helping your band put its head above the parapet.
The MMA one-year anniversary giveaway
To celebrate one whole year of Modern Metal Academy, we've launched a free-to-enter giveaway with a raft of prizes up for grabs. That includes Browne's signature Schecter Tao guitar, an Antelope Audio Zen Quadro USB interface, Baby Audio plugins, strings, MMA merch, and plenty more.
Head on over here to learn more and to enter.
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