The most popular metal riff of all time

Follow Demolish Fanzine, if you don’t do so already. Editor Curt King has been, well, demolishing it with a seemingly bottomless vault of old-school knowledge. His most recent jaw-dropper is a post on The Most Popular Metal Riff Of All Time. You might be as skeptical as I was about that title – until you read the post and hear the audio clips. Dude is absolutely right. This is The Most Popular Metal Riff Of All Time.

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I’ve tabbed out one variation of it above. It’s the intro to Accept’s “Flash Rockin’ Man”, one of the examples in Curt’s post. (You can stream the song below.) The riff is a textbook example of what he’s talking about. The Most Popular Metal Riff Of All Time is in standard tuning. Ideally, it works off of the open A string. That trebly, slightly brittle ’80s distortion is crucial to its magic. For added toughness, grind it out on the low E string before returning to The Most Popular Metal Riff Of All Time. If Grand Theft Auto had a classic metal radio station, this would be its clarion call.