If you know me personally, I'm a massive wrestling fan. And Chris Jericho (along with The Undertaker) is my favourite wrestler of all time. Now while I respect Chris Jericho for fulfilling his other passion in life which is music, and forming a metal band with himself as lead singer, it doesn't mean that I love his music as much as I love his wrestling ability. That's not to say Fozzy are a bad band at all and Chris Jericho is a bad singer, quite the opposite. It's just that they're not really my "thing".
But "Sandpaper" is a cracking tune. With a massive assist from M. Shadows, the lead singer of Avenged Sevenfold, Chris Jericho and co. make a great step forward in this song from their early days of a novelty parody metal cover band to starting to carve a good name in the metal genre for themselves. Sure the music video is cheesy, but this song kicks some serious ass and deserves your attention. If you've not heard Fozzy before and want to see what Chris Jericho is like as a metal rockstar, give this track a listen. If you're a fan of Avenged Sevenfold and you've not heard this song, you have nothing to lose either because you'll probably like it too. Basically, just listen to the damn song!!
I remember "Nightmare" coming out quite well. At the time I wasn't the biggest Avenged fan, and to this day I don't "love" them, but definitely respect and appreciate them a lot more now than I did back in the day. I remember that "Nightmare" was the first song released by A7X since their drummer The Rev passed away. A lot of people weren't sure if the band would bounce back well, because of how highly thought of he was as a member of the band and as a drummer. But "Nightmare" is an excellent track. It has everything you'd expect from an Avenged song, some excellent guitar solos, some really good drums, heavily inspired by The Rev (he did work on this song before his death) and of course, M Shadow's very distinctive vocals. The video is very silly but very watchable too. "Nightmare" has become one of the band's biggest songs and considering that it came out after The Rev passed away shows you that the band definitely had plenty left in the tank at that point. Do they now is another debate (personally I still like them but I know others that disagree).
Hello again. I've just done another show, which I can promise is weirder and has more requests than any other show so far. The Rock and Metal Double Feature Show (or it split into two parts) will be my regular show going forward. It mixes everything I love, music wise, and it's enough variety for you guys to put in your song requests. Any feedback is appreciated if you listen to the show, the link is below!
The Rock and Metal Double Feature Show: 14/12/13 Track listing: The Rock Hour It's No Game - David Bowie Since You've Been Gone - Rainbow Paint it Black - The Rolling Stones Iron Man - Black Sabbath While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Beatles November Rain - Guns 'n' Roses Going for Gold - Shed Seven If Your Dad Doesn't Have a Beard, You've Got Two Mums - The Beards Crazy Bitch - Buck Cherry Panic Station - Muse Smooth Sailing - The Queens of the Stone Age
The Metal Show The Great Destroyer - Nine Inch Nails Insane in the Brain - Cypress Hill Going Under - Evanescence Ha Ha You're Dead - Green Day Ava Adore - Smashing Pumpkins Martyr No More - Fozzy Through Glass - Stone Sour 5 Minutes Alone - Pantera Shout at the Devil - Motley Crue Obsessive Time Directive - Azure Emote Sulfur - Slipknot Seize the Day - Avenged Sevenfold Total show running time: 02:00:00 Other entries you might want to read:
Note: This is my 250th post on my website. Woo. Hello again. Great news this week. I've managed to find a way to get my DJ shows online. I discovered (belatedly maybe? I dunno) a website called Mixcloud, which take pride in letting rookie or pro DJs upload their shows, without worrying about piracy or illegality issues, by proactively allowing royalties to go to the makers and creators of music for anything you upload. Meaning, I can broadcast my shows, and the artists get paid for it. It's win win. So, this week's show is my homage, to the Download Festival. I play headliners of old, play music for the headliners of next year, and give a special "hello" to other bands who may or may not deserve recognition, behind other artist at the top of each bill. So, you can listen to the show below, or go here, to view my Mixcloud account! I'll also put a link at the top bar for future references. Please support me if you like my stuff, and of course, send in any song requests for any future shows, anywhere; here, Facebook, Twitter, Mixcloud, where ever you fancy. All the best!
Download Festival Special Show: 4/12/13 Track listing: Metallica - For Whom the Bell Tolls Deftones - My Own Summer (Shove It) Marilyn Manson - The Fight Song Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills Avenged Sevenfold - Hail to the King Avenged Sevenfold - Beast and the Harlot Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country Black Sabbath - War Pigs Guns 'n' Roses - Sweet Child o' Mine Drowning Pool - Bodies Sylosis - Born Anew The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster - Psychosis Safari Aerosmith - Same Old Song and Dance Aerosmith - Last Child Aerosmith - (Dude) Looks Like a Lady Slipknot - Psychosocial Rage Against the Machine - Renegades of Funk System of a Down - Chic 'n' Stu Rammstein - Moskau KoRn - Ya'll Want a Single Stone Sour - Bother Rob Zombie - Pussy Liquor Alter Bridge - Metalingus Fall Out Boy - This Ain't a Scene it's an Arms Race Linkin Park - Papercut Linkin Park - A Place for My Head Linkin Park - In the End Total show running time: 02:01:18 Other entries you might want to read:
Hey there, welcome to
a three part homage to what I call The Rise and Fall of Guitar Hero. Today I’ll
talk about The Rise of Guitar Hero, going through the first part of its history.
I’ll talk about the series, the games, and my feelings on them as we go along.
Tomorrow, part 2, is going to about The Fall of Guitar Hero, where I talk of
its decline, as well as the games and my feelings that contributed to its
demise. Part 3 will be put up on Wednesday, where I’ll be posting a Mixtape of
songs that are my favourites to play from each game in the series.
The Guitar Hero series was one of my favourite game series
of all time and in its peak, was extremely popular and has revived interest in
many rock bands of the past. Activision claimed the third game in the series
was the first title in the history of video gaming to hit $1 billion in sales,
which shows you the power the game had at one time.
Guitar Hero first started off as a vision from a company
called RedOctane, who saw potential in an earlier game series called
GuitarFreaks, which had relative success in Japan. Seeing potential in the
series, they decided to create their own game with their own format, hoping for
success in the States. They asked Harmonix, a game development company who have
created other music games such as Amplitude and Frequency, to moderate success.
An agreement was made between the two to produce this game series.
The idea was to have a guitar controller to replace the
control pad. This guitar controller would, naturally, be in the shape of a
guitar. Where the frets of a genuine guitar would be, were five large plastic
buttons. These ‘frets’ were colour coded; green, red, yellow, blue, and orange.
On the base of the guitar was a strum bar that could be lifted up and down, and
a whammy bar. The concept of the gameplay was for the respective colours of the
frets would represent different notes in the sound of a guitar, and on the
television screen, when you would see your respective coloured fret, you would
hold down the colour of the fret, and strum in motion with the timing. Getting
the timing with ten notes in succession would then double all your points.
Getting twenty notes in succession tripled your points, and thirty notes
quadrupled your points. That is the basic concept of Guitar Hero, arguably much
easier than playing a guitar itself, which gave it access to many people of
varying skill levels.
The original Guitar Hero controller.
There are other gameplay elements as well. If you had a long
note in a song (like, in the beginning of “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath), you
would simply hold down the respective coloured fret while the note is being
played. You could play chords, simply by holding two fret buttons at the same
time. Hammer ons and pull-offs were possible by pressing a series of frets in
quick succession to a certain section of a song. At particular segments in a song,
certain notes would have a white silhouette around them, and playing these
notes in succession gave you an ability called “star power”. Gathering large
amounts star power was fundamental in getting a high score in the game. To use
star power, you have to store enough of it first, and then, then you lift the
actual guitar controller ninety degrees upwards (or pressing the ‘select’
button on the controller itself), and all the notes would turn a glowing blue
colour. When star power is activated, all notes count for twice the score as
before. So if you hit over thirty notes in succession, you would have a
quadrupled points multiplier; but with star power, those points would be
doubled to eight times the original points. The whammy bar had its use too; if
you were in a series of notes contending for star power, if any of those notes
were long, you could use your whammy bar to start developing star power on the
cuff.
Naturally with star power and a points multiplier, this game
was very good at making it competitive to get the highest score. High scores in
video games took a turn by the mid-nineties, not many games used high score
boards, or used point systems. It wasn’t really until the mid naught, when
leaderboards on Xbox Live and the PS3 were developed to compare your score to
other people around the world when the point system gained a second wind. While
Guitar Hero was released just before
the seventh generation consoles became official, this really game did make it
competitive again to compare your scores with other friends. Another addition
is the rating of songs out of five stars, where successfully playing a song got
you three stars, but hitting more notes and getting multipliers gave you a
better chance of a four or five star rating.
As the original game didn’t have any licences to use master
copies of any songs, they created cover versions for all the songs on the game.
So with the guitar sorted, the gameplay elements created and the cover versions
developed, everything was rocking to get the game released. All that was left
really was to develop characters that the player could choose from. It was
important that these characters were varied, and covered many genres of rock
and metal, as there are so many subgenres of music that could be associated with
the game. For instance, for ‘metalheads’, Axel Steel was created, a very large
man with really big shoulders and long brown hair. In contrast, Johnny Napalm
was designed with punks in mind; he was a tall and slim topless man with a
Mohawk. One of the female characters was Pandora, a slim girl with dyed light
blue hair and was appealing for people into the gothic fashion, and genres
associated with that movement.
Johnny Napalm, the 'punk' character.
Everything was set! They released the game in the States on
November 8th, 2005, and was met with huge critical acclaim. No one
expected it to be the hit it was, with the soundtrack of cover versions praised
and the guitar controller. The original Guitar Hero controller was modelled
after the Gibson SG, a guitar used by Eric Clapton, The Edge, Dave Grohl,
George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix, James Hetfield, Tony Iommi, Keith Richards
amongst others. For me personally, the best thing about Guitar Hero was the
fantastic effort put into the order of the songs. The idea was that you would
have five tracks, and if you successfully play through them all, you’d unlock
five more tracks. The songs got more and more difficult as the game went on.
This is a formula used in most of the games, but no game has been more
successful at making the learning curve arced to precision as the original
game. Starting with “I Love Rock and Roll” by Joan Jett and finishing with
“Bark at the Moon”, the songs are for the most part simple yet great tracks
that begin to take a difficult turn towards the middle, and at the end are
songs with difficult riffs and guitar solos.
The game came out in the states in November ’05 and I caught
wind of it around the turn of the year, when the game was starting to feature
in many award listings. I completely forgot about it though as it wasn’t released
in the UK yet. It wasn’t until around March time, when my local Game store had
a playable demo. I gave “I Love Rock and Roll” a go and absolutely fell in love
with the game. I HAD to have it. I found out when it was being released, which
was April 7th 2006, and got a copy not long after then. I was
hooked. It was one of the most amazing video game experiences I ever had.
Playing these awesome songs, learning new ones, getting better at playing the
game, it was ecstasy. I managed to beat it on Easy within days. “Easy” mode
only allows you to use the first three of the five frets. I went onto “Medium”,
which made you use four of the five. I remember going all the way with ease
again, until I got to the penultimate track, which was “Cowboys From Hell” by Pantera,
an excellent song, and found it too difficult. After a lot of practicing I
finally beat it, and moved onto “Hard” mode, which was the first time all five
frets were to be used. The rest is history now.
The original Guitar Hero had some excellent cover versions
in the game, as there was no rights to any master copies, you have to give a
lot of credit to the team who made these songs their own. Some of the songs are
a bit off, like the person doing Lemmy in “Ace of Spades” by Motorhead, but
some of them are pretty damn good. The original “Guitar Hero” will always have
a place in my heart, the makers of the Guitar Hero series have improved certain
elements of the gameplay as the series has gone on but the original has
developed a certain charm to it, and it’s a game that I’ll always stick on once
in a while. If I were to review the original Guitar Hero it would get ****1/2
stars from me, as there were things that could have been improved, and were.
Let’s move on.
Guitar Hero I has a charm no other game in the series has.
After the success of Guitar Hero, it was inevitable a sequel
was to be made. And the team were straight on it, with Guitar Hero II being
produced and released here in the UK seven months after the first, on November
24th, 2006. I remember those months quite clearly. I remember being
on MySpace on a Guitar Hero message board, and I, along with thousands of
others, were excited to hear news on what songs were to be put on the sequel.
We all made radical and personal suggestions in anticipation. Some songs were
announced early, like “You Really Got Me” by Van Halen and “Freya” by The
Sword. I remember “Misirlou” by Dick Dale being announced, and I marked out
pretty bad. I’m not the biggest Dick Dale fan, or Pulp Fiction for that matter,
but knowing such a complicated guitar track being put on the game was awesome.
I remember not getting the game until probably Christmas, as I could afford it
when it was released. In the month between then, I vividly remember going on
YouTube to view how hard “Misirlou” was going to be and being in awe over how
much strumming you would have to do on the harder difficulties. I also remember
this time my local GameStation having the complete copy of Guitar Hero II on
display for customers to try out, and actually unlocking a lot of the songs
myself, just to play “Misirlou”. It was as difficult yet epic as I had
imagined. Another highlight for me in the second entry in the series was one of
the bonus tracks. I had never heard of Homestar Runner or Strong Bad, but
playing “Trogdor” changed all that. I didn’t really understand why the song was
funny or how I’d missed it, being someone that had been into this type of
internet humour for some time, but doing some research on it not long after
playing the song showed me the wonders of Strong Bad, and SBEmail. If you like
internet humour then give SBEmail a go, Strong Bad is one of the funniest
online villains of all time.
Anyway, Guitar Hero II picked up from what Guitar Hero
started. In this game it was possible to play songs on bass guitar, and you
could play co-op with a guitar and a bass player. One of the most important yet
subtle changes to the game were the hammer ons and pull offs being much easier
to do this time around. I’m not sure why it was difficult to do it in the
original, but the change was thoroughly appreciated universally. Some new
characters were added this time round, like Lars Umlaut, a Nordic death metal
player, and Izzy Sparks, who represented the hair metal movement of the
eighties. There were also three note chords, which were simply strummed by
holding three of the five frets. Guitar Hero II’s soundtrack wasn’t as good as
the original Guitar Hero’s, I mean there were some great additions like “Beast
and the Harlot” by Avenged Sevenfold, “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and “War
Pigs” by Black Sabbath but on the whole there were a lot of songs that just
didn’t feel belong, or weren’t as fun to play as others. In the original game
there were songs that I wasn’t too fussed about, but they were fun to play and
you could understand their inclusion into the game. Guitar Hero II didn’t
always have songs that felt that way. Still, it was a solid effort, one I rate
at ****1/4 stars.
The seventh generation consoles were starting to become the
main force around this point, and if Guitar Hero was to keep remaining relevant
they had to move onto the new consoles. Their first venture was to move Guitar
Hero II to the Xbox 360, and they did this in April 2007. The PS3 and Wii don’t
have this title in their collection. To mark this occasion, the makers made a
special guitar controller for the Xbox 360 version, which was shaped like the
Gibson Explorer, which was used by the likes of Clapton again, The Edge again,
Billy Gibbons and Paul Stanley. This controller however was criticised as the
base model was smaller than that of the PS2 controller, and was harder to hold
therefore.
The Guitar Hero II controller, modelled after the Gibson Explorer.
In July 2007, the final Guitar Hero by Harmonix was
released. This spinoff title, “Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s”, paid homage to many
artists associated with the eighties. It was met with mixed reviews due to the
soundtrack not being as good as the previous games, and also because it had
fewer songs, yet was the same price as the other titles. I bought this myself,
but soon sold it when I completed it, as it just wasn’t a very good set of
songs, even from the eighties.
Some time between the release of “Guitar Hero II” and “Rocks
the 80s”, Activision gained acquisition of RedOctane, and MTV Games bought
Harmonix. They decided to release another sequel, and sought out Neversoft to
develop it. The Guitar Hero series was an incredible mainstream machine by this
point, and was on a high never experienced before. With the muscle of MTV, they
were able to finally start using master recordings when available. With
Neversoft they had an experienced and valued developer, who had given the world
the Tony Hawks series. They built “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock” from
scratch, with their own designs and ideas behind the game.
The game was released in October in the US, and on November
23rd, 2007 here in the UK. With a massive 73 playable tracks, it was
a huge collection of songs. They had some great tracks on the set, and many of
them were master recordings, like “One” by Metallica, “The Number of the Beast”
by Iron Maiden and “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones. The game was a huge
project, much bigger than the other two games, and it had the feeling of a
gaming giant about it. Playing “Guitar Hero III” and “Guitar Hero” were similar
experiences, naturally, but there was a different feeling this time round.
Playing “Guitar Hero” back was like going back to an old house you moved away
from, which was smaller than your current house. “Guitar Hero III” had many
pros and many cons. On the whole, I’d say this is probably my favourite title
in the series, just because there are so many excellent songs on the track
listing. At this point I was able to play many songs on “Expert” and the third
in the series is most certainly the most difficult game. They really put all
their efforts to testing the hardcore Guitar Hero gamers to the max, “One”,
“Number of the Beast” were incredibly difficult songs to play. But it was one
of the additional features that made the game so difficult.
Slash makes an appearance in the 3rd game, he also featured heavily in the games marketing and artwork
The main inclusion for “Guitar Hero III” was the new battle
feature, which was available in two-player as well as in the main storyline. In
this game, the idea is that star power is replaced by battle power ups, which
are used to hinder your opponents ability to play the song successfully, like
crank the difficulty, or make one of the frets disabled temporarily. This
battle feature, as mentioned earlier, is used in the main storyline. In the
main storyline there are two famous musicians, Slash and Tom Morello of Rage
Against the Machine. You must ‘battle’ them to progress. At the end of the game
the final battle commences, against Lou the Devil. This battle is incredibly
difficult. The song, a metal cover version of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”
(an incredible cover version may I add) is played, and playing against the
Devil is just ridiculously difficult. It’s so difficult that personally, I’ve
never beaten him on “Hard” mode; it’s only one of two songs that I can’t beat
on that difficulty in the entire series. The other song? Oh, that’s in this
game too. When you beat the game, you unlock the hardest song in all of the
Guitar Hero games, “Through the Fire and Flames” by DragonForce. The song, when
done on Expert, has nearly 4000 notes in it, and is eight minutes long. Having
scoured YouTube, it looks like the first evidence of someone actually completing
the song with 100% of the notes is in this video below,
which was put on YouTube on June 3rd, 2008, eight months after the
game was released. The guy has a rival now, and the two have been trading
records for the most points in the song. Me? As I said, I can’t even beat it on
“Hard”!
So, one of the pros for the game is that it has a huge
selection of great tracks. Another pro is that the design of the game and its
characters was definitely an improvement. The cons? Well, I said there were
many great tracks to play, but this title definitely has many duds as well.
Because there are a total of 73 tracks, there are definitely songs on the game
that haven’t really got much justice to be on there. None more so than “When
You Were Young” by The Killers. I’m not saying it’s a bad song, but when this
game is called “Guitar Hero”, and the entirety of the first verse has NO guitar
in it at all, it shouldn’t be in this game. You’re just sitting (or standing
there), for an entire verse, with no game play at all. It’s stupid. A similar
experience also occurs in “Miss Murder” by AFI. These songs just shouldn’t be
on this game. Another con was the difficulty of the game, as I said earlier,
the game was definitely aimed at the more skilled Guitar Hero fans but they
didn’t really make the game that accessible to new players. The beautiful
learning curve of the original Guitar Hero was definitely gone by now. But the
biggest con in this game is all the plugging and advertisement in the game. It
takes about 90 seconds in the beginning of the game for all the companies, and
there is a lot in the game too, none less than the stupid “bom chicka wow wow”
girls. Nevertheless, this was a solid entry, and the pros definitely outweighed
the cons, and I’d give the game ****1/2 stars again, as I said, I usually play
this entry over any other.
I
call this part The Rise of Guitar Hero. Tomorrow I’ll be back with The Fall of
Guitar Hero. I hope you’ve enjoyed this half of the story and I hope you come
back tomorrow with the second part. On Wednesday I’ll be putting up my
favourite songs to play. I hope to see you back here tomorrow pronto! Have a
good night.
Hello there, we’re finally here, the penultimate listing and part of the Noughtie Series. Here is my biased list, my personal favourite 100 songs of the decade. I actually found this listing harder to do than the unbiased one. There are songs I’ve left out of the 100 I desperately wanted to include, but you can’t say it’s the Top 100 and have 120 songs in it can you? So, this is how we’re going to do this. For the next 10 days I’ll be revealing the next 10 songs in the listing. There is a 3 song artist cap on this listing, to make room for more artists to be mentioned. All of these songs you will have already seen in my Mixtapes, naturally, as they are biased like this listing.
Today, you’ll get #100 to #91. I’ll include some videos in here too, to the more obscure songs, if you haven’t heard them. After this is finished, we’ll be at the huge finale, the 100 day 100 song unbiased marathon! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this list may be more interesting for you, or maybe it won’t! Let’s get to it!
#100. “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)” – Florence and the Machine
Released: 21/6/09
Album: Lungs
I kick off my Top 100 with this little cracker. Florence is a fantastic singer; this is one of her best songs vocally on the album. The chorus fantastically catchy too. If you’ve never heard of this band and think you need an introduction, search on YouTube for this because it’s probably the best song to start from. But chances are you have heard of it and hopefully you like it!
#99. “Beast and the Harlot” – Avenged Sevenfold
Released: 6/3/06
Album: City of Evil
Listings: My Favourite Riffs
As it says above, this was featured on my favourite riffs listing. The guitars are truly great from start to finish, from the intro riff to the main riff, to the guitar solo, everything. It’s truly a fantastic guitar track and sounds brilliant.
#98. “Pressure Point” – The Zutons
Released: 19/1/04
Album: Who Killed… The Zutons?
I described this track back when I was praising this band as one of the best new artists of the decade. I just love Dave McCabe’s vocals in this entire song, he’s a very good vocalist. His shouting of the word “pressure!” over and over again at the end is brilliant, and the song slowly builds up to that fantastic climax. Great stuff.
#97. “Feels Just Like it Should” – Jamiroquai
Released: 6/6/05
Album: Dynamite
It’s odd praising Jamiroquai because for the most part, he doesn’t interest me. He always plays between the lines of funk, electronic, alternative and pop music but one thing is for sure is that this song is brilliant. It really kicks ass, it’s definitely my favourite song by the chap with the weird hats. It’s a brilliant song that uses his human beatbox skills with electronic music. It’s plainly, a very good song.
#96. “Mass Destruction” – Faithless
Released: 31/5/04
Album: No Roots
Once again, this is another band/group that I don’t have a great lot of praise for. Difference being I do respect Faithless, they’re a unique group that do things their way and have almost a cult fanbase. This is definitely my favourite track by them as well, and it has some great lyrics to add to the great sound on the track. Good stuff.
#95. “Processed Beats” – Kasabian
Released: 18/9/04
Album: Kasabian
This isn’t featured in my favourite riffs listing but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad riff. It’s a pretty cool riff actually. This was probably the song that caught my attention first of this band. I knew the tune, but didn’t know the name of the band. Then a few years later it all came back to me and it was like “oh, that was Kasabian? Cool…”, and the rest is history.
#94. “Four Kicks” – Kings of Leon
Released: 10/1/05
Album: Aha Shake Heartbreak
Another great riff, this is one of my favourite Kings of Leon songs. Shame it’s so damn short though, but the two and a bit minutes really are good. It’s a shame really as their newer stuff is nothing on how good these songs were. This is a fantastic little ditty by KoL here.
#93. “Ghetto Love” – Spinnerette
Released: 11/12/08
Album: Spinnerette
Spinnerette, if you didn’t know, is Brody Dalle’s new band after disbanding The Distillers. The sound is very different, it’s a lot less punk and riot grrl and a lot more electronic, alternative rock. I prefer the sound personally, and this is the first single from their first and only album to date. It’s a very good video and I must say, for someone who doesn’t think too much of Brody’s looks usually, she looks pretty fine here.
#92. “Spread Your Love” – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Released: 1/6/02
Album: B.M.R.C.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are one of those odd bands, that can produce really good quality tracks, but don’t do it very consistently. They’ve been compared to the Jesus and Mary Chain, a resemblance I can understand but I think JaMC were certainly a more consistent, better band. Regardless of that, this is a good quality track, possibly my favourite by this band.
#91. “The Way I Am” – Eminem
Released: 7/9/00
Album: The Marshall Mathers LP
Eminem is the first artist in this listing that has reached a three song cap. So there’s two more songs in this listing by him. But first, this song is just brilliant. This is Eminem’s response to all the critics who want to tell him how to make his music, and try to put pressure on him to top his most popular song at the time, “My Name Is”. He really lets rip in this song and it’s one of my favourite raps by him. The remix by Danny Lohner that had Marilyn Manson provide some back vocals was also fucking kickass. Yep, so I like this song, and that’s just the way I am!
So there we go, Part 1 of my Top 100 Favourite Singles of the year ends here. I’ll be back tomorrow with Part 2, counting down from #90 to #81. See you then.
Here we are, Part 11 of the Noughtie series. In chapters, this is the halfway point of the series, but the last two parts are going to be very long, so in days, we're no where near finished! Anyway, here's an interesting listing for you, where I talk about my 10 favourite guitar riff songs. This isn't to say they are the best, but that I love them the most. These are different riffs with different sounds, a nice variety. If you're a fan of the guitar, and have not heard some of these songs, I'd recommend you give them a listen. I've got six videos for six of the entries below, for ease. Anyway, let's go!
10. "Hash Pipe" by Weezer
As I said, I didn't claim best, but favourites. I love this riff, and I love the "uh" noises that work with the riff too. Hash Pipe is a cracker of a track, it's my favourite Weezer song. The video is good too. Weezer really did shine with this song, it's a shame it's not as popular as other tracks by the band.
9. "Bad Things" by Jace Everett
Yes I'm a True Blood fan. It's pretty much guaranteed that you are if you've heard this song before. I love the guitar in this song, the first guitar strums that bring you into the song, the guitar solo, everything. It's a killer track. Not a True Blood fan? Never heard this song? Here it is below:
8. "Beast and the Harlot" by Avenged Sevenfold
If you're a metal fan, I'd be amazed if you've not heard this song. It's featured on Guitar Hero 2 as well. The entire song, the guitars are just brilliant. I love the main riff as well, it's some great work by this band. I don't really know what else to say, apart from shame on you if you've not heard it!
7. "Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja" by Lostprophets
I don't claim to be a huge Lostprophets song but one thing is for sure is that they really got hold of a killer riff with this song, a riff that hasn't even come close to being rectified. While they're off trying to keep up with the emo bandwagon, this song remains as awesome as ever, remaining their best song, probably not going to be beat anytime soon.
6. "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes
Chances are, this is the most memorably riff of the decade. If this was an unbiased list, I'd probably place this at number 1. It's just so easy, so memorable, it just clicks. Jack White can play very difficult guitar riffs, he's a phenomenal guitarist, yet how ironic that his most famous song will be one of his simplest riffs?
5. "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" by The Queens of the Stone Age
I'd put the music video up... but it's NSFW. So this is just the song with the album cover in the background. The riff from this song is another simple one but fuck me, it kicks ass. Not as much as the guitar riff at 1:02 mind. That is a ridiculous piece of guitaristry (new word, if it gets into the dictionary I'd like you to at least credit me for it) right there. I love this song so much, it's one of my favourites by this fantastic band.
4. "Grounds for Divorce" by Elbow
This song was a sleeper hit on me. I never really paid much attention to it when it came out. Then it got put on some adverts and I kinda thought it sounded cool. Then not too long ago, I remembered it and started playing it a lot. Man, this song really kicks ass. The riff is just gorgeous, and pretty much serves as a chorus for the song.
3. "Keine Lust" by Rammstein
This is probably the heaviest riff on the listing. Being a huge fan of industrial metal, the guitar riff in this song will just blow your ears off with those machine guitars. The song is about a premonition for the future, when the band retire they'll just become lazy and fat. The video for this song represents this and is fantastic, with the band all huge and fat (apart from the keyboard who apparently doesn't eat much). It's great. Anyway, the riff for this song is just fantastic, as I said, if you like industrial metal.
2. "Romantic Rights" by Death From Above 1979
This is one of my favourite songs of the decade. You will see it very high in the biased Top 100 list that will be posted later on in the series. If you have not heard this song, seriously, listen to the song below. Yes, that's a base. That's a fucking base. How the fuck is he making that noise with a base?! It's just amazing this song, it truly is. I love the guitar in this song, I love that riff. It's so innovative. I told you in a previous listing that they have reunited, I really hope they make more songs like this, it's just awesome. By the way, I can't actually find the music video on Youtube, if you have it, let me know. They have "the making of" but not the actual video. What's up with that?!
1. "New Born" by Muse
It's hard choosing one Muse song it really is. I was close to choosing "Knights of Cydonia", but the main riff from this song just pips ahead. Man, the guitar riff on 1:04, is just, in my opinion, one of the best guitar riffs of all time. My ears just melt when I hear it. There's a reason why Matt Bellamy is considered the decade's best guitarist, this song being one of them. Say what you want about Muse, but there's no denying the talent Matt Bellamy has as a guitarist. Sorry, it's just not even under dispute.
I hope you enjoyed this listing, paying homage to some of rock's best guitar riffs. If there's songs on here that you've not heard before and like the sound of, you're welcome. So, what are your favourite guitar riffs of the decade? I'll be back on Thursday, starting off the second half of the decade mixtapes, with 2005.
