Metal riffs without distortion

As something of a followup to yesterday’s article about rearranging or otherwise reinterpreting metal for compositional purposes – Youtube guitarist VAALVLA recently uploaded a video showcasing the main riffs of some popular metal and rock songs played clean and without any guitar distortion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PznnIHVZ3gQ

This was insightful and/or gimmicky enough to earn the attention of a couple other metal journalism websites, and it helps to reveal, on some level, the difference in technique between, for example, a Slayer and a Pantera song. A drum track was provided, but it doesn’t detract from the lesson at hand. VAALVLA also has several other videos in a similar vein that may be interesting to our readers.

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10 thoughts on “Metal riffs without distortion”

  1. pleb says:

    Those YouTube videos Varg posted of him playing classic Burzum unplugged was pretty sweet, some of his sections would sound great on acoustic guitar

    1. This is pretty cool:

      Burzum – Lost Wisdom (Clean Guitar Arrangement) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06bSLYjchcY

  2. Dualist says:

    He’s missed out by far the greatest, most evocative and intelligent riff in metal (possibly in Western Music):

    PANTERA – WALK

    I don’t care what anybody says, it just IS. Proper tingles-up-the-spine stuff.

    1. I blew my head off like Per Ohlin says:

      Nice sarcasm.

  3. Dualist says:

    OK then, the 2nd best in Western Music:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XiDG9acqRk

    I don’t like the lyrics but the music is sublime. Apparently it took 3 years to compose.

    1. I blew my head off like Per Ohlin says:

      Surprisingly, Jay-Z was half decent on his debut album. Unfortunately he’s just a biter who jacked off styles & bars. So it’s fitting that he has very much in common with Panterrible.

  4. Anthony says:

    Is it called “Five Minutes Alone” because that’s how long it takes Phil Anselmo to masturbate, or because that’s how long it took to write that riff?

  5. Phil says:

    Early Gorgoroth would sound sweet like this.

  6. Disremember says:

    Vk goes wild also does a good rendition of metal songs using a piano on YouTube

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