We've all been impressed by great, even amazing riffs, but sometimes we might be disappointed by a riff that doesn't hit the mark. Of course we all have our own preferences so my question is: What makes a riff bad for you? Is it being too generic, too simplistic, trying too hard, or something else? Or is it just being played in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Personally, I don't like riffs that spend too long chugging/tremoloing on a single note. It's alright when the guitars need to make space for the vocals in a verse, or as a short break to transition from one riff to another, but outside of that, it gets boring quickly.

I don't know. Every time I think of something I don't like, I immediately think of a band or song who does it and sounds great. I have no hard and fast rules about what I like.

I will say, it bugs when a song builds up to something and the payoff sucks. Example. Vader's song Return to the Morbid Reich. Counting the Intro track Ultima Thule, there's like two minutes of slowly building tension that is totally awesome, then the riff that starts about 1:00 into Return just doesn't land for me. I'm always expecting something faster and thrashier to release all the energy built up but it just doesn't.

I love Vader and this song and album though, and this is a minor complaint.

Fuck chugging (never good) and even a great band such as early Mortification had an incredibly amateurish riff on their album "P.M.A." I'll have to listen to it at home and mention the song tomorrow.

Weird question: I like all kinds of riffs. I guess the genre that I dislike the most is power metal, but not so much for the riffs as for the vocals.

too many riffs. songs suffer from a new riff every three bars. that's when I'm thinking, "I wish someone...anyone...in the bad was an editor. Someone please fucking edit this music." Nuclear Assault. Megadeth. Those two come to mind that aren't all-out tech wankery. But I prefer stripped down, simple, caveman music. If you write a good riff, play it for 3-4 minutes. Maybe a second one if you really want to get daring. I'm good with that.

Repetition. Once is okay I guess, but if I've heard it twice why do I need to hear it a third time?

I dislike riffs that don't really sound thought out I guess like where it just doesn't seem like a complete musical idea, it's genuinely hard to come up with an example off hand, but I look at it like pornography: I know it when I see it.

Sometimes I'll hear a riff that I can hear the way in my head how it should progress like what the next logical part or shift in tone should be but then it doesn't happen and I'm like fuck it's anti climactic, my brother was playing a forbidden song semi recently but I just heard it and they didn't play what they should've I don't even remember the song but I remember my reaction

In general I dislike meandering type shit that just doesn't grab me by the throat, there has to be a certain forcefulness to metal riffng in my opinion

Another one is those 80s type clean riffs in thrash, it's like unless its super memorable, it just sounds nice enough on the surface, but sometimes it just doesn't get memorable and it's like well god damn you just did that cuz it's common

Idk sorry about no examples, it's just one of those things that I don't know what's wrong with something until I literally come across it type of thing .

Generally not a fan of when the guitars drop out and bass/drums takes over, if that counts.

Pinch harmonics.
A few sprinkled into solos can be classy, or even sneaked into a riff now & then, but riffs built around them sound like garbage to me. Or when they’ll repeat a normal riff 3 times & on the 4th time replace the last note with a squeal.

So the track's called "Human condition" and the full-on amateurishness appears at 2:32 and 4:09 in the song. Not evil, not death.

Riffs are great, even the simplest ones are effective depending when they're used. What I don't like is when bands continuously adhere to the lowest chord in their arsenal (E-standard, C#, B or whatever their guitars are tuned to) to supply all the riffs for the duration of the song or even album. I can deal when other aspects of the band are strong enough to compensate for the sameness of the riffs, but it still bugs me over time while listening. Lots of thrash bands and old Swedeath groups do this among others. That's why I'll always appreciate bands like Morbid Angel that provide riffs from all over the fretboard while something like Immortal's last batch of releases wears me down to drowsiness due to almost everything based off the same chord.

Yeah I noticed that too actually playing the guitar is that sometimes if I play a riff in say for example the in between the 5th and 8th frets it sounds way more evil and disturbed than if I play the same thing lower on the fretboard, I think this is a very good critique, and come to think of it it's a very good critique of swedish stuff I never really thought about it before but yeah that stuff definitely lacks in variety besides honestly probably nihilist

My point about the guitar anecdote of course being theres more than one way to sound absolutely evil and predatory than just playing with the first three frets on a guitar, I thought that's why we shit on nu metal and symphonic chugga bullshit

I hate the way those bands go 'chugga chugga chugga weeeeeeeee weeeeeeeee chugga chugga diddly dooooooooo' y'know?

Comes down to songwriting... sometimes riffs can sound fine by themselves but they aren't put together with any flourishes of melody that make it stick out, or the songs just seem content in plodding along. Lots of retro metal is like this.

Also some black metal tremolo riffs sound really irritating when done with a super shiny clean production.

Sometimes DSO/Thantaxifath styled dissonant riffs just kill the momentum for me. Liturgy somehow escapes this by taking everything up to 11 though.

Liturgy seem like something that would piss me off, but that's mostly down to just the way people talk about them, you saying they go up to 11 is promising cuz I just thought they were one of those "creative" type bands who spend half the time making soft stuff that could accompany a 9 year olds dance recital, I'll check it out cuz nothing better than pretentious bullshit that actually backs itself up in terms of sheer force

It's probably easy to not like it, but somehow every time I listen I'm sucked in and never bored. She's got a good sense of melody and there's a lot of aggression done in a nontraditional way. Vocals are probably too loud but whatever.

Yeah I just remember people bitching about the manifesto, but who gives a shit, id much rather someone lecture me about why they rule than do the humble "I'm just a person I'm having fun making my music" boring routine.

Oh yeah, I forgot they had transitioned, I figure that's probably a good sign it could very aggressive, Ive had thoughts like that myself in regards to my gender I'd never even transition tho or anything like that not my style, but I just can sense other men think I'm weird or soft or a pussy or something and it really fucking makes me angry too, so I could only imagine how they feel, it just makes my blood fuckin boil Its like men hold up this image of pussy in their heads so they have to convince everyone they love pussy lest they be seen as not manly, and in reality you'd be far manlier If you applied standards to the women you date but no I guess having no standards and being a sucker is manly to some people, and the funny thing is im literally cold as possible most of the time, i literally just dont get peoples complete emotional dependency on their sexual orientation

Sorry about the rant it's just you mentioned she and it reminded me of this shit because I experience it in my own life, and it's just I'm tired of being made to be some fuckin bitch to people when I literally do far more daring shit than those cowards on a daily fucking basis

Anyways, I'll probably have all that shit in the back of my mind when I decide to listen so I imagine it would be cathartic in some way, but even if it sucks I still got my nuclear death

Curious, what tuning do you use that stuff you write sounds more evil between the fifth to eighth frets?

Personally I think way too many people are way too focused on the tuning when they should be focusing on keys. Different riffs sound better in different keys. I tune down to C standard and my most common keys to use are Cmin, Dmin, Emin, and Fmin. The way I change keys is to move up or down the fretboard.

I tune in just standard d tuning, I prefer it to E because I think E is just a little too light sounding for my tastes, I just don't have the little bit of extra low end I desire.

C tuning just kinda makes me feel like I could easily put less effort into making truly evil stuff, like idk I just imagine onward to Golgotha without being memorable as something one could Excel at in c tuning

I should experiment with B and A a lot more cuz I never tune that low, but i just see myself abusing it, and I just don't think I'm at the level to be extremely creative in those tunings yet personally.

I really should concentrate more on tuning than I currently do, because I think I've exhausted D in terms of how I play in that tuning, I'm mostly just now developing a sort of really odd rhythmic sensibility that I try to characterize as loose but tight simultaneously, like a super precise ambient wave of hell to be a pretentious douche.

Honestly glad you asked the question cuz I really think I should start trying to develop another type of signature playing style in another tuning, I think I just have a bad habit of not really playing around with shit too much.

I think eventually I want to experiment with contrast in tone like super echoey guitar sound on one ear then super razor sharp precise guitar tone on the other ear.

But then I could also find a way to not only mix two different tones together as one I could then mix two different tunings in each ear and I could just take it further and further into just a very bizarre distinctive place that would just be my own.

Idk the most important thing to me is just learning how I can make different changes that appear to be just completely weird for it's own sake, but somehow still translate it into music that has some sort of passion and just doesn't immediately come across as strange or experimental. I'm kinda obsessed with how I can be forward thinking but in a way that's taking an established base and just continuously evolving it in small ways but every time it just seems radically different.

Idk I just got weird ideas about music, it's just hard for me to really even begin to think how I could pull something like that off that id even be happy with, chances are probably not but ive never really explained it that succinctly to myself so I guess now I have a goal

I dislike the boring lifeless plodding 'non-riff' you find in a lot of gothic metal. I know, I know, who the hell listen to gothic metal for riffs?



Yeah, I can hear guitars. Would have been nice if they did anything remotely engaging.

That's also sadly common in much of the symphonic "power metal" that's being put out in recent years. The guitars only seem to be there to fill space in the mix and glue themselves to the rhythm section without doing anything melodically interesting.

When the riff just doesnt resolve at all. Like, sometimes it's very effective to tease the audience with unpredicatability but it's so frustrating if it just never comes to a "conclusion". I feel like death metal is the worst offender in this case

I'm alright with chugs but I agree about diddly doos.

Riff that comes to mind: Aces High by Maiden......and of course many of the riffs the East Londoners have written. Tons of COB(Alexi and Roope too) riffs that are so rad. I've been taking in so much new music lately it's almost hard to recall shit I liked. Lots of 80's hair riffs come to mind......but then, and don't fawking crucify me
there is that one Papa Roach riff (so sorry for even saying that name here) which, once gotten in, is so hard to get out of my head.

Don't want to be to cliche but COF, having been referred to as gothic have some pretty rad riffs (IMO) over many albums/guitarists.
Not sure how the community here feels about Dani and what he's been doing the last 35 years but I'm a fan.

I really dislike the "noise" riffs that these type of post-thrash or nu-metal bands started using. I would say that Sepultura started doing that on Roots, Machine Head dabbles in them often, ditto for bands like Skinlab, Slipknot quite often on the more experimental tracks... do you guys know what I'm talking about?

This is more specifically about a drum beat, but in the 3/4 Swedeath riffs. I really dislike the drums playing the basic thrash beat over the top in the way that means the first beat changes between snare and kick.

For example, when 1 2 3 1 2 3 is played kick snare kick snare kick snare

I don't mind when it's snare on one, or a blast beat, but the alternating really bothers me for some reason.