Good Riffs from Kirk Hammett Metallica

[Endrik]

I totally understand why Bob pushed Kirk, before making the black album Bob just recorded with John Sykes, Jason Becker and Richie Sambora - players who are real guitar gods. He expected Kirk to be the same, obiously he was wrong.

[Mr White]

"...And Im here to show you.....


RIFFS!!!"


Cracks me up every time!!!


James

[craprapx2001]

kirks vibrato is shit...you cant be a good player in that style when you have shrill shitty sounding vibrato he bends flat and and sharp all the time and its brutal and hes been playing so long now and he still has the same shitty sounding vibrato i dont get it...

[JC_Denton]

Metallica is my all time favorite band, and i love Kirk . He is very good rythm player , and can write killer riffs. Also i agree that his vibrato is bad, actually i think that his solo playing has gone much worse. For me as a tru fan it is very hard to face the truth- that his solo playing sucks ass. I dont know what has happend with him. Some of his solos are good , Sad but true , master ,Whenever i may..., no leaf clover , the list goes on...... His playing was on when when they recorded S & M and it was 6 or seven years ago or somthing like that.

[Gio]

kirk's chops get shittier with time.

He was untouchable before the black album, then he kinda got lazy and started playing sloppy solos and oversaturated them with wah.

[MattyCakes]

haha good first post for me here
he plays in metallica and is a millionaire
we are bedroom players

[VitaminG]

kirk's chops get shittier with time.

He was untouchable before the black album, then he kinda got lazy and started playing sloppy solos and oversaturated them with wah.

untouchable by whom? I can think of a bunch of his peers that were playing better, more interesting stuff than he back then. And that's not just because it's fashionable to harsh on the guy now - I thought so at the time.

I've said it before, Kirk's notoriety as a guitarist comes from the size of his fan base, Metallica being the biggest metal act of all time. It's not that he's that much better than other guitarists in similar bands, it's just that for a lot of the Metallica fan boys & girls, the band was their introduction to the genre and hadn't any other guitarists to compare him to. Just as I thought Dave Murray & Adrian Smith were the shit. And for a lot of older guys now, he holds a place in their affections and so is more than the sum of his abilities, just as Ace is for Kiss fans.

[VitaminG]

haha good first post for me here
he plays in metallica and is a millionaire
we are bedroom players

you and me both, buddy.

But as a new member here, you may not be aware of the number of gigging & recording guitarists that frequent this forum. Some damn fine players too, and I don't mean 15 year old kids who can almost nail the intro to Enter Sandman. Check out the mp3 section.

[SGplayer]

....

[RacerX]

Who does? I thought Hetfield writes most of the riffs. Also the solos?

[JC_Denton]

As an example the main riff in Enter Sandman ( witch kicks major arse) is written by Hammett He has come up with many cool riffs in metallica.

[craprapx2001]

the main riff for sandman is so simple man its not very impressive that he came up with it. but even if he did write a few catchy riffs he's still a terrible lead player and thats what i have more of a problem with. hetfeild definately didnt write the solos...he wrote one solo for nothing else matters im pretty sure ,bbut thats it...i dont know much about their latter albums like the ones after the black album...i stopped listening by that point

[Venomboy]

His solos have gotten worse and don't sound inspired anymore. His vibrato gives me chills in the wrong way.

Regarding his troubles on the Black Album in that video...

How many of you work as a creative professional? Artist, designer, musician, etc. I do. It's not easy to be "on" every day, every hour. A LOT of shit comes out of me before the good stuff comes out. The cameras caught Kirk having trouble. Big deal. EVERYONE doing something creative goes through that. That video was edited and cut to show specific things. We didn't see every moment. The scenes shown might not have been representative of the whole recording.

[Norton]

He could have been a better guitarist.He didn't imporve his playing in all these years.he just got in his money pool and practiced minimally I think.

Yes he is the only person who acts like a metal musician in the band(the skom thing) but he's still a bad guitarist.There are A LOT of people who are twenty seven times better then him.


I think he's just lazy.Even an average person could play (composing is another thing but playing is just a practice issue) well in 20 years.

[GodOfRhythm]

First four albums:

James pretty much wrote everything (together with Cliff) except most of the solos. Hetfield primarily was and still is Metallica.

He did have his own solos though (MOP, To Live Is To Die, etc). Lars would help bring sructures to the songs and it astonishes me how much of a natural ear and talent Lars has for these kind of things, pretty amazing.

Kirk's solos were written by Kirk mostly, however he did get some help from Cliff and Lars and sometimes James. But hey who never gets any help from some buddies when they're stuck in the middle of a solo by getting shown a cool lick to use?

Rest of the albums: same dealy. Eventhough on Load, Reload & Saint Anger Kirk played and recorded some of the riffs as wel, regardless of whom they were written by. Solos are a mix of Kirk's and James's, but still it's mostly Kirk playing the solos.

-------------

Now, I agree pretty much completely with what VitaminG said. I personally think Kirk was a great leadguitarplayer in the 80's, nowhere near the best, but he could shred it up and play his solos damn good and fast as hell. The Black Album was the beginning of the almighty Wah imposing on his playing, unfortunatly. Eventhough some solos on that album are still awesome: The Struggle Within, The Unforgiven and yes, Enter Sandman. Anyways, to me Kirk and Metallica are more than a sum of their abilities. They're my number one band and will be 'till I die. Sue me.

Now that we're talking about it anyways. I find it so funny how double standards are used so often by almost anyone who pisses on Metallica (which is the fashionable thing to do nowadays). Metallica came out with the Black Album (which is one of the greatest hard-rock albums of all time, no matter how you cut it) and omg did they SELL OUT or what! They fucking suck, blabla. Yes they did widen they fanbase and they did it while writing music they still love. What's the fucking problem? Now here comes the double standard: the same guys that blame and hate Metallica for selling out and whatnot often do praise the likes of AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, Kiss, etc etc to the moon and back because they're so good. The problem is just Metallica started as a metalband, I guess, and the contrast between their as-good-as-zero radio exposure pre-88 and their skyrocketing to success in 91 was too big to handle for most supposed 'fans'.

Anyways fuck it, I'll go spin my AJFA vinyl right after this Mr. Big CD is done.

----

(That concludes this lecture! :p)