We all love when music evokes an emotional reaction deep within us, but there’s something especially unique about how heavy music achieves this. It’s the guitars. Loud, distorted, messy, angry, and downright brutal guitars. Let’s face it: there’s nothing like it in music. While often imitated with synthesizers and samples, nothing will ever compare to the sound of a distorted guitar punishing your ears with its signature aggressive attitude. As a guitarist, you might think these moments are rare—after all, you know how the magic trick is performed. But that’s not the case, and I have the riffs to prove it. While I could wax on and off about countless parts that inspired me as a guitar player, these are the select few that truly changed my path as a musician.

In Flames

Artifacts of the Black Rain

Back in high school English class, I was waiting for the bell to ring when my friend Nick, headphones in hand, eagerly awaited my reaction to a Swedish band I had wrongly referred to as “The In Flames” for a while (before being corrected). The album was The Jester Race, and the song was “Artifacts of the Black Rain.” At the time, I was already a fan of heavy music, with the usual “big four” metal bands leading the charge. But I had never heard anything like this. The lead guitar work was like Iron Maiden on steroids, and the rhythm guitars supporting those leads were just as mind-blowing. It was heavy, melodic, majestic, and the production invoked such a raw, primal response from me that I would later use as the foundation for my journey into learning guitar.

Fear Factory

Shock

On the day Obsolete by Fear Factory was released, I was sitting at my friend Ray’s house, smoking cigarettes and goofing off with our crazy crowd. The first song we listened to was “Shock,” and yes, we were shocked. Pun intended. From the moment those guitars punched you in the face, you knew you were about to experience something special. The main guitar riff was so intense that the bass drop it carried felt like your heart pounding in your chest. Another element that made this riff stand out was how perfectly it matched the vocals. Everything gelled together in a brutally beautiful way, complementing the band’s tyrannical mechanical sound. 

Pantera

Floods

It’s Pantera, so take your pick. While it’s not hard to find a great riff in their catalog, finding one like “Floods” is almost impossible. This song features some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies ever crafted by the legendary Dimebag Darrell. “Floods” taught me that a great riff doesn’t always have to be a punishing assault on the senses. You can create contrast between sections to provide your ears with a diverse range of moods and atmospheres. This is especially true in “Floods,” particularly when the solo hits. Throughout the song, you shift between clean guitar notes that shimmer, as if teetering on the edge of a rusty razor blade holding onto its last gleaming bits of steel. The verses are drenched in distortion, pulling you into their grasp like heavy metal quicksand. Just when you think things will calm down, you’re hit with what many consider one of the greatest guitar solos in heavy music history, followed by an ending that’s as somber and sorrowful as the tragedy that struck its creator.

Metallica

Welcome Home (Sanitarium)

Speaking of riffs that prove you don’t need distortion to convey darkness, Sanitarium was one of those songs that left an imprint on me—a feeling that still resurfaces every time I hear it. You know the type of song, right? The ones that instantly take you back to the time when you were first obsessively listening to it, and you can almost feel exactly what it was like to be alive in that moment. It’s like musical déjà vu. The notes in Sanitarium ring out with a subtle tremolo effect, buzzing in your ears while evoking a soft sadness. The music sets the stage in your mind, creating a soundtrack for some of your most haunted thoughts and memories. At least, that’s what it did for me, and it still does to this day.

Anthrax

Inside Out

I remember hearing this track and wondering how the hell Scott Ian managed to sound so much like Dimebag. Turns out, he had hired the man himself to play on the song! The signature Dime-style acoustic sound on the intro should have been a dead giveaway, but back then, with no internet to quickly verify these things, details like that were scarce. Dimebag contributed countless licks to Anthrax over the years, even being considered the sixth member of the band at times, and this song remains one of the heaviest entries in not only Anthrax’s catalog, but also in Dimebag’s immense collection of riffs.

Nevermore

Narcosynthesis

I stumbled upon this band by accident while rummaging through a pile of clearance CDs at a local department store that was going out of business. I was immediately impressed by how heavy they sounded, and even more amazed at how they could scoop the mid-range more than any other band I had heard at the time. Then came the album Dead Heart In a Dead World, and my perception of guitar production changed forever. The band had developed a sound that, while still scooped, had a thick, present midrange that was in-your-face. It took me years of trial and error with amps and recording techniques to figure out how this was done. But this song was the spark that ignited my exploration of other production methods in heavy music.

Cradle of Filth

Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids

The great Stuart Anstis, a modern-day equivalent of a classical composer, communicated his hauntingly beautiful arrangements through six strings instead of sheet music. He crawled up and down the guitar neck like a spider weaving its web of macabre melodies into an exquisite blend of technicality and terror. Equal parts melodic and heavy, Stuart went on to create some of metal’s most exquisite pieces with Cradle of Filth. Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids was the first song I heard of his, and it remains close to my black little heart because of that.

Sepultura

Roots Bloody Roots

Few riffs can inspire a sea of people to break their necks in unison as this track can. With inspiration stemming from the bands traditional Brazilian heritage, they took that percussive influence into realms of unabashed brutality when they drop tuned their guitars into the depths of molten lava that exists beneath or earths crust, and delivered one of the most recognizable songs in heavy music. While it may be overplayed to some, its status remains true as a perfect example of how raw emotion infused into a song can elicit raw emotion from its listeners.