As the starting point in writing a death metal song, developing an effective riff is paramount. Utilize techniques like chromaticism and palm muting to give your riffs more strength and weight.
Metal lyrics often touch upon dark and violent themes, including war, murder, antireligion, Satanism and similar topics. Additionally, their words may also contain philosophical, emotional or even sociopolitical insights.
1. Riffs
An integral component of death metal songs is their riff – a short guitar melody which serves as the backbone for instrumentation in the song and can either be rhythmic or melodic, using fretboard patterns as much as possible.
The bass line should act as a companion piece, adding weight and heavyness to your song. Be sure to play precisely. Lastly, add fills and solos to add interest and make your riff stand out.
Once the riffs and bass line have been written, it’s time to compose lyrics. Death metal songs typically explore dark, violent themes that challenge society’s norms; choose something personal to you in order to write more genuine and emotionally moving lyrics.
2. Bass
There are certain songs in metal music which showcase the bass guitar in an especially striking manner, typically featuring heavy distortion and dark or violent themes typical of metal genre. An example would include Trooper from Iron Maiden as one such track.
Bass lines in metal music usually follow chord structures closely and emphasize rhythm over melody. But that doesn’t preclude songs from featuring some cool riffs or melodies; try exploring various techniques such as tremolo picking or diminished scales like Phrygian or Hungarian minor to achieve different results.
Long runs of low frequencies are an effective way to create powerful sonic impacts and induce feelings of aggression and power in listeners, especially when combined with high-pitched growling vocals, such as those typically heard in death metal songs; often these vocals will also be distorted further adding depth and texture to their overall soundscape.
3. Guitars
A quality metal song requires a memorable guitar riff that captures your attention, followed by a bass line that backs it and adds weight and heavyness. Finally, fills and solos should add variation and excitement.
Some metal songs may feature electric guitars, but you can still create and record an engaging death metal song on an acoustic. Take Crowbar’s song Skeletons of Society as an example – taking its electric version and finding creative ways to make it work on an acoustic, such as adding downpicking or power chords.
Listening to other metal bands and taking careful note of their riffs, drums, and vocals is the key to mastering metal playing. Soon enough you’ll be writing death metal songs like an expert!
4. Solos
Metal guitar solos tend to be more technical and flashy than in other genres, featuring intricate fretboard wizardry like this stunning solo from Swedish guitarist Mattias Eklundh on Soilwork’s “Human”.
Death metal guitar solos often involve playing them over an undulating power chord progression that consists of more than two or three chords, making them more challenging and giving soloists greater scope for experimentation with chromaticism and harmonic minor scales.
Metal solos tend to be fast and involve many techniques, including tapping, sweeping and whammy bar antics. Therefore, beginners are advised to learn basic riffs and melodies first before trying their luck at learning a metal lead; Metallica’s “Fade to Black” intro solo is an excellent place to start as it includes several techniques at once.
5. Drums
Drums are an integral component of any heavy metal song, and should match its intensity by being fast and aggressive with heavy distortion effects.
To create the perfect drum beats, it is helpful to focus on different rhythms and patterns when writing drum beats. Consider using double bass beats, blast beats and odd time signature beats as examples of rhythms; looping or changing tempo may also allow for interesting sounds.
Once you have your guitars and drums recorded, it’s time to add vocals. Because death metal songs often feature dark and violent themes, your vocals should reflect this aspect.
Most death metal bands incorporate growling, which involves singing with a deep and raspy voice. While often criticised, growling fits the aesthetic requirements of death metal’s aggressive lyrics perfectly. Bands also often utilize high-pitched screaming as part of their performance.
6. Vocals
Death metal songs typically feature growled or screamed vocals with harsh tones to compliment its dark and violent themes, often including gory rhymes. This genre was designed to challenge society’s morals, religion, and politics through music.
Music from this genre is distinguished by sudden changes in tempo and key, chromatic chord progressions and diverse song structure. Guitars typically feature heavily distorted tones with palm muting and tremolo picking; rhythmic bass and drums also contribute heavily to this style of music.
Vocals are an integral component of metal music. Most metal songs use English for lyrics, though Exhumed, Dying Fetus and Cannibal Corpse have used other languages. Even within death metal there can be humorous or campy lyrics; vocalist Nick Holmes from Bloodbath once stated “Lyrics are another instrument, they’re just as essential as music itself” [1].
7. Lyrics
Have a killer guitar riff and progressions down pat, but something’s missing: lyrics? There is an easy solution that will help you overcome writer’s block and compose powerful metal lyrics quickly and efficiently.
Death metal often covers dark and violent subjects in its lyrics. Therefore, selecting an appropriate topic that both fits with and challenges society’s beliefs is of utmost importance when selecting lyrics for death metal music.
Listening to other bands playing your genre is also useful, as this will give you an understanding of its norms and make writing lyrics that fit easier. The more knowledge of metal music there is, the easier it will be for you to craft authentic metal songs.
8. Mixing and mastering
Once all the individual parts of your song have been composed, the next step should be mixing and mastering to give your piece an overall professional sound.
Mixing metal can often require special care in its production. For instance, when mixing your screams it is often best not to reduce mids as this will make them sound too clean and sterile – not what is desired when creating metal music!
Metal composition presents its own special challenges when mixing, as it tends to be played loud. This may result in listener fatigue and hearing damage; therefore it is vital that caution be used when mixing metal.
Death metal music genre characterized by distorted guitars, high-pitched screaming, and aggressive drumming is typically performed by bands composed of two guitarists, a bassist, and drummer using techniques such as palm mutes or tremolo picking; additional elements may include chromatic chord progressions or varied song structures.
9. Release
An effective metal song should elicit an emotional reaction in its listeners – be it adrenaline, fear, anger or elation – in accordance with its topic or theme.
An effective metal song must have strong rhythm and drumming. Additionally, it needs to be loud, fast, and intense.
Bass and guitar should also be played quickly and with intensity to achieve a punchy sound in the music.
As part of your death metal songwriting experience, experimenting with different techniques is essential to creating your own distinctive sound and style. Listening to other metal bands will also help you understand this genre better and write more effective songs – try listening to Tool’s “Schism” to gain an idea of how a heavy metal song should sound.
Death metal music is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal that features guttural vocals, low tunings for guitars and drums, complex musical structures and lyrics that often deal with horror stories, serial killers or cannibalism as its themes.
Reel Heavy is also distinguished by sudden tempo shifts and odd time signatures, often taking influence from progressive and doom metal genres. Furthermore, some bands have even included elements from these genres into their sound.
1. Riffs
Riffs are the foundation of every song, and metal music is no exception. To craft effective metal songs, it is imperative that riffs that both grab attention and drive forward the track are created – this will help create an emotive yet heavy sound. One way of doing this is listening to plenty of metal music to understand its style and structure before writing your own.
Metal riffs are short melodic phrases with an infectious rhythm, typically played on electric guitar but sometimes bass or synth too. Many of the best metal riffs feature chromaticism, tritones, minor thirds as well as power chords; these powerful chords add an additional punch and can be utilized in various ways when writing metal music.
But creating a riff is only half the battle – bass and drums are integral in creating the groove in metal music, so use your creativity here to come up with unique rhythms and patterns that stand out. Aim for an intensity-matching drum beat that can also vary its tempo or feel to make the song more dynamic.
Snare drums are often an integral component of metal music, adding powerful rhythmic pulse to complement guitar riffs and create powerful guitar solos. Therefore, practicing double kick pedal technique and familiarizing yourself with playing snare drum rhythms will help prepare you for writing metal songs.
Once your drum track is complete, the next step should be adding loops for each part of the song, such as intro, verse, chorus, solo and bridge sections. When all these parts have been written out it is time to begin writing lyrics to complement your music.
2. Melodies
Death metal may seem like an unforgiving genre without melodies, yet melodies still exist; they just may not be as noticeable. Melodies often come through vocal lines but this isn’t always required – guitar riffs that use harmonic minor or phrygian scales can add subtle melodies that work well with harsh vocals in this genre; consider bands such as Obscura or Necrophagist as examples of this trend.
Melody in metal songs can range from the simple repetition of one note, to more intricate melodies featuring chromatic sequences, diminished scales and occasional sharp or flat notes that add layers of complexity and depth to its music. A great melody should help listeners distinguish the various parts of a song while providing another dimension of complexity and depth in musical arrangements.
Melodies may be written after the riffs and progressions have been composed – this is common practice among progressive death metal bands; however, knowing how to write an effective melody regardless of musical style remains critical; weak melodies will never work for metal songs!
Death metal songs generally focus on some sort of violence or brutality in history, biblical stories, or simply life itself. Finding an idea or topic that is meaningful to them and has an emotional resonance will create more engaging music as well as building deeper connections between themselves and their audience.
To gain an idea of the power and expressive potential of melody in metal music, listen to some classic melodic death metal bands like Carnage, God Macabre, Entombed Dark Tranquillity or At The Gates and Dark Tranquillity for inspiration. But equally important is exploring other genres outside your genre until finding what type of musical environments, influences and themes have personal significance and expressive gravity for you.
3. Lyrics
Lyrics are an integral element of songwriting. Lyrics add emotion and context for the overall mood of a piece, helping listeners connect with music as well as communicate its intention with audiences. For a metal song specifically, lyrics should reflect its style by including themes and motifs from instrumentation as well as dark topics like death, murder, the occult or social criticism – subjects often featured prominently within such lyrics.
To craft an engaging song, musicians must first identify what topic they wish to explore. They may choose a specific theme or use the musical arrangement structure as guidance; metal songs typically employ introduction, verse, chorus and bridge or instrumental breaks to transition between parts of their song. Once this step has been taken, lyrics that reflect both rhythm and melody of musical arrangement should be created while trying to avoid using tired cliches that have become common in other metal songs should also be created by musicians.
Death metal requires lyrics that match its intensity and aggression, with growled vocals frequently used by bands to convey an atmosphere of menace or impending doom; other bands opt for melodic singing styles which still reflect emotional intensity in their music.
Lyrics for metal songs must be carefully written to complement its complex rhythms and melodies, which can present musicians with an intimidating task. Lyrics must stand out against guitar riffs and powerful drumming while still remaining true to themselves while conveying emotion within an intricate musical arrangement.
Some metal bands use intentionally indecipherable lyrics as part of their musical experience, particularly black metal which relies on obscure themes to communicate its themes.
4. Chorus
Writing a metal song requires consideration of vocals, drums and bass alongside guitar riffs. Simply creating heavy rhythms and blasting drums won’t do; your chorus needs to make an impactful statement about itself – perhaps by writing an instantly catchy melody that stands out against its powerful accompaniment (think Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” for inspiration here!). Every guitar riff stands out and stands out easily from its rest of song’s musical parts.
To create the ultimate metal chorus, it’s also crucial to utilize contrasting chords and harmonic intervals that create texture and tension in the form of harmonic intervals and scales (Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor) as well as exotic scales such as Phrygian Dominant or Hungarian Minor to add an unexpected sense of unpredictability in your tune. Power chords should always be utilized, though experimenting with altered shapes or inversions could add even greater depth.
Once your music has an engaging riff and melody, the next step should be writing lyrics that resonate with fans of metal music. Modern metal covers a range of topics spanning introspective narratives to social commentary; make sure that you take time researching meaningful lyrics that capture this energy. Furthermore, be mindful that they translate well as vocal delivery – whether that involves guttural growls, high piercing screams or some combination.
Death metal song writing requires hard work and dedication, but its results make it worth your while. By following these tips, you can compose songs that will captivate listeners and have them banging their heads all night in mosh pits. Start your writing journey by immersing yourself in the genre by exploring Tool, Mastodon and Metallica discographies to gain an idea of their distinctive styles; experiment with various scales, rhythmic patterns and guitar techniques such as palm muting or sweep picking to craft signature riffs that stand out amongst crowd.