From Metallica to Slipknot, Sylosis Frontman and Guitar Virtuoso Josh Middleton Picks 10 Heavy Riffs That Are Far Harder Than They Sound

Key Highlights :

1. Ghost frontman Josh Middleton says that he's not good at many things, but he thinks he's pretty good on the guitar

2. The riff for the song "As [singer/guitarist] James Hetfield would tell you, the riff is all downpicking

3. The middle-eight section is played all downpicking

4. The main riff that comes in straight away is hard to play

5. The verse is just fast picking

6. The main riff for the song "Love that band!" is hard to play, but it's even harder than it sounds

7. The riff for the song "Bring Me The Horizon and Architects finally headlining festivals shows that metal is ready for the next generation to take over" is not technical, but it has this whammy pedal effect

8. The cover song "The 10 best cover songs by Ghost" is a list of 10 songs that are easy to play, but still have a lot of complexity in them

9. Ghost is a band that is known for its technicality, but sometimes a meaty guitar riff is all you need to serve a great song. Getting faces scrunched and heads banging is one of the best things a heavy band can do, and it's a fine art that takes years to master. Sometimes, writing a caveman riff is trickier than it seems.

10. In advance of his band releasing their new album in September, we asked the British metal virtuoso to name 10 songs that used immense complexity to make a riff that sounds so simple.

     Heavy metal is a genre that prides itself on its technicality – but sometimes a meaty guitar riff is all you need to serve a great song. Getting faces scrunched and heads banging is one of the best things a heavy band can do, and it’s a fine art that takes years to master. Writing a caveman riff may seem simple, but it’s trickier than it looks.

     Josh Middleton, frontman and guitarist of British metal band Sylosis, knows this all too well. “I’m not good at many things… but I think I am pretty good on the guitar,” he tells us on a Zoom call. In advance of his band’s new album release in September, we asked Josh to name 10 songs that used immense complexity to make a riff that sounds so simple.

     Here are his picks:

     1. Metallica – “Enter Sandman”

     “As [singer/guitarist] James Hetfield would tell you, the riff is all downpicking. If that’s not bad enough, you’ve got a really fast little gallop in there as well that can trip you up. It’s hard. It does actually sound hard, but it’s even harder than it sounds. Add in the fact that James plays his guitar so low down and that makes it a million times harder.”

     2. Slipknot – “Wait and Bleed”

     “The middle-eight section. It sounds quite notey, but they play it all downpicking. That was one of the things Mick [Thomson, guitarist] said to Jim [Root, co-guitarist] when he joined the band: it needed to be downpicked. The stamina you need to play that is tough. Admittedly it isn’t a simple riff, but it’s made twice as hard thanks to the approach, which takes a lot of hand strength.”

     3. Slayer – “Raining Blood”

     “There’s a riff that ’s builds up to, and it’s the counting: I don’t like to have to do maths, I don’t want to do the counting. I don’t want to use my brain too much. I have no idea what the time signature is, but anything that requires a bit of counting while you’re playing is like patting your head and rubbing your stomach.”

     4. Black Sabbath – “Iron Man”

     “If you listen to the riff then you’ll go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s really hard.’ But, as a kid hearing it, I didn’t think it was hard, because I couldn’t hear the notes. All I could hear was a blur, because it’s an old-school recording: the depth and clarity isn’t there like it is with some modern recordings, so all those notes skipped me. It was only years later when I saw them playing it that I was like, ‘Oh, you’ve got all these notes in there!’”

     5. Pantera – “Walk”

     “I saw a video recently with this YouTuber, Ola Englund, who interviewed [singer/guitarist] Robb Flynn. They played this riff and Robb was like, ‘You’re playing it wrong: those harmonics are up on higher strings.’ You’ve got to, like, leap over these strings to play it cleanly, even though it’s simple. It’s an iconic slow riff that doesn’t seem that technical, but to play it clean and with precision, it actually takes a lot of getting used to.”

     6. Lamb of God – “Laid to Rest”

     “That verse riff – it’s just the tempo. You have to do this picking and jumping between strings whilst also maintaining this tempo that is somewhere between slow and fast. That’s the hardest, or at least it is for me: you get a real burn on the wrist. It’s a deceptively tricky one.”

     7. Dio – “Holy Diver”

     “This riff doesn’t sound remotely technical, but it has this whammy pedal effect. The co-ordination of doing that riff and getting that effect is actually really hard – so much so that the guitar tech in actually used to do that bit for [guitarist] Dimebag Darrell. When you’re playing it yourself it’s really tricky – much trickier than it sounds.”

     8. Stampin’ Ground – “The Unforgiving”

     “Love that band! The main riff has you moving power chords around really fast and, because it isn’t drop-tuned, you can’t just do it on one finger – you have to move your whole hand around. It might actually sound quite hard, but it’s even harder than it sounds, especially as tight as it sounds on the record. I’ve stolen some riffs from Stampin’ Ground.”

     9. Machine Head – “Davidian”

     “The main riff that comes in straight away, it

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