What is the hardest song to play?

[thebigz]

Yesterday my wife and I were in the car and Master of Puppets came on the radio. I told her it is one of the hardest hard rock/metal songs to play.

It got me thinking, was I right? I've never been very good, so I can't accurately gauge, but I can't really think of many songs that are tougher than MOP. Maybe Blackened or Battery. I can play none of these.

I also admittedly don't know as much music as most here, so I'm looking for your input.

1) How hard really is this old Metallica stuff to play?

2) What is the hardest song in the genre to play that you can think of?

[Larz]

A lot of it is the riffing and palm mute timing, which James is very good at but not necessarily the easiest to copy.

i wish I could play Far Beyond the Sun by Yngwie, love how that sounds, but that's a whole different animal.

i think some of the Priest Painkiller stuff is difficult, very difficult, Tipton is an animal.

[Vass]

Puppets is tough on the rhythm but I'd take it any day over Holy Wars.

[thebigz]

Puppets is tough on the rhythm but I'd take it any day over Holy Wars.

I figured there would be quite a few megadeth songs pop up.

[watson503]

MoP is a fun one to play, I think it is a good tool for practice and play through it a couple times a week to keep my downpicking up to speed - just take it slow and play it correctly with no shortcuts, downpicking all the rhythms. Soon enough you'll get it down pat and up to speed.

[straycat]

Way too many to list.

[Hellbat]

Born by Nevermore always stuck me as a song that would be difficult to play. It does some crazy stuff rhythmically.

[xenophobe]

This was always a somewhat technical and fun old-school thrash song I used to play... Anything from their first two albums is worth trying.

If you like downtuned and groove, anything old Carcass is a lot of fun to play too.

Just search online for tabs...



I dare you to figure out anything guitar-wise on this one.

[tomanyjacksons]

Extreme's Play with me, is a bit of a tough one to play.

[neilli]

I always struggled with Battery - for me it's so fast and to do that well with 2 guitar players takes some effort. Especially the chorus..

[Axegrinder87]

Puppets is childs play, sorry.

Here's a tough one

[xenophobe]

Lecherous Nocturne... I like that!

[MartinBarre]

I don't think MoP is all that difficult to play if you sit down and take it section by section.
Try something by Death - I learned "Pull The Plug" which is probably one of their easiest, and it took me bloody ages. I can't imagine how hard their later, more technical stuff would be.

I'd think most old Metallica stuff (bar KEA which is pretty simple) is actually harder to play than most Megadeth (not including any solos, just rhythm parts). We used to do "Tornado of Souls" and it was much easier than something like "Harvester of Sorrow". The structures in the old 'Tallica stuff was pretty complex and a nightmare to try and jam with a band if everyone didn't spend the time to learn it.

[jgcable]

mop is cake. my band played it perfectly a few weeks after it originally came out. there were many bands playing that song live at that time.

[xenophobe]

Metallica is mostly typical intro-verse-chorus-bridge-solo... every once in a while there's a tricky riff from a beginner's standpoint, but it's just that... a riff. No funky time signatures or off beats and everything is repeated enough times throughout a song without too much progression that you usually only have to play with it a few times before you start to get it. Early Metallica was one of those bands every beginning metal guitarist learned how to play in the 80's and 90's.

I'm fairly certain anyone here who can play it, plays the Mechanix version of Four Horsemen... Kill'em All is about as basic as you can get. Ride the Lightning is more difficult than MOP, IMO. MOP is Metallica's last great album in my opinion... Fancier palm muting, but RtL is far more epic...