After listening to "Hades Rising" off of Bloodbath's latest album, I was astounded by the very catchy lead guitar melody played over the few chords the rhythm guitar is playing. Anyone who has heard this song knows what I'm talking about, and another example of what I'm talking about would be found in another Bloodbath song entitled "Furnace Funeral" during the keyboard interlude. Not too fast, but not too slow, yet very doomy and melodic.

Other examples:

Blut aus Nord - "Our Blessed Frozen Cells" - 4:11 - Scary song, but absolutely catchy melody played with the guitar and what sounds like a keyboard with a string voice.

Daylight Dies - "Dismantling Devotion" - 3:33 - I believe this song is down-tuned, which makes the chords played under the reverberating lead guitar sound absolutely heavy and brilliant.

Dissection - "Where Dead Angels Lie" - 2:10 - This lead is one of the faster ones on the list, but has a very folky feel too it which later alters a bit later in the song.

Amon Amarth - "With Oden On Our Side" - 3:30 - This is one of those songs with a progression that ascends to a high chord to one just below the tonic chord itself. Sounds heavy and very memorable.

Insomnium - "Last Statement" - 5:45 - Another song with the lead guitar playing with a delayed tone over very heavy yet simple chords. Some screaming over this one too.

Katatonia - "12" - 6:53 - Don't know what to say about this song. It's great, but it matches the description with the songs above.

If you have a (favorite) song that has similar melodies to these songs above, feel free to share them and explain a bit about them (preferably black, death, or doom metal).

Immolation - Close To A World Below.

Naglfar - And the World Shall be your Grave

Intro and verses at the start are evil as fuck, as usual, and then the lead comes in with the chorus, with a very different atmosphere from the previous sections, not having an evil feel, but actually being played (I would assume) in a major scale, despite the lyrics

"The day you die is the day I smile" etc...

Lol

Decapitated and Necrophagist both have a habit of creating riffs that are insanely catchy, I think.


Majority of Necrophagist is very easy to hum or sing along to.

That section is pretty much ripped exactly from Entombed's "Left Hand Path". I personally don't mind that they copied it, as the EP wasn't all that serious and was just meant to pay tribute to the old Swedish scene, including bands like Entombed.

immortal-unholy forces of evil at 1:21

cant believe the drummer used the techno beat but it works so well and its such a groovy part

Some of Intestine Baalism's stuff might fit into what you're looking for.

I also wouldn't mind finding something similar to Dissection's "Where Dead Angels Lie", as well.

Yeah, the keyboards are very similar, but that's the only aspect of the song that sounds identical to each other.

Err... do you mind that Entombed copied it in the first place?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5zzRV3v-Qw

Cryptopsy - Phobophile, the first riff, actually like all of the catchy riffs on that album are amazingly heavy-yet-memorable.

For Dissection I'd probably go with Black Horizons myself, that's probably my favourite song by them.

Try the newest Immolation, 'Shadows in the Light', and also the aforementioned 'Close to a World Below'.

Opeth's Morningrise might suit you, too; particularly the songs Nectar and Blackrose Immortal. But you've probably heard those already.

I find that Pestilence has some dangerously catchy riffs, especially on the first two albums. Malleus Maleficarum, being their thrashiest, is also the most infectious of the Pestilence discography. Just listen to "Subordinate to the Domination" or "Extreme Unction", or especially "Out of the Body" from the second album.

Although not quite like the bands you have listed, Dying Fetus' album Grotesque Impalement is full of catchy riffs.

Idk, I try to make a distinction between good catchy and bad catchy in metal music. Good catchy is when a riff is memorable and impresses itself on the mind with its ingenuity, whereas bad catchy is pop music style hooks to bury themselves in your psyche and drive you insane until you turn on the FM radio and buy a Big Mac and shop at WalMart. A lot of the stuff listed in this thread is more on the bad side of catchy, in my approximation, Amon Amarth, Dissection, Necraphagist...

This isn't any kind of hard and fast standard I use or anything like that, just kind of how I feel about certain bands and music.

Well, a "good" catchy but heavy album, I think is "Saturn Sector" by Blackdeath. Especially the opening riff on the first song! It is like a harder version of something from "Transylvanian Hunger", has a great sound.

Wow, I had no idea. Touché, good sir.

I try to spread Phantasm-awareness when I can. Necrophobic borrowed that as well.

Yeah, it can't be "stolen" from Entombed when it wasn't theirs to begin with.

BTW, what Necrophobic song has it?

Sargeist's Satanic Black Devotion is what you are looking for, lots of catchy melodies dispersed in between hateful bm riffs especially Black Fucking Murder and the two last songs (if my memory serves me right)

In fairness the resemblance between the Bloodbath song and the Entombed song is mostly in the arrangement and the context within the song. The actual melody of the keyboard part doesn't so much sound like the Phantasm theme, at least to me.

Necrophobic just used a snippet of it to start off a guitar solo... 3:27 of 'Sacrificial Rites' from their Nocturnal Silence album, aaaand another handy youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wOk_GMpBPY

"God" by a forest of stars, the repeating guitar accompanied by violins and desperate vocals.

Intestine Baalism.

Excellent melodic death unlike any other band, new album is my top album of the year. One of my very favorite bands in general.

Arghoslent.

I hate the lyrical content, but again, unlike any other band you will ever hear. GENIUS riff work and dual guitars and CATCHY but heavy.

The bit I've heard from the new album had higher vocals. Are the higher vocals used for the entire album?

I like some of their older stuff and have recommended them in this thread.

As many have said, Intestine Baalism is very good death metal with melody, as opposed to melodic death like At the Gates, etc. Other bands like this which I like a lot are Gorod, Kronos, Garden of Shadows, and even technical bands like Quo Vadis, Arsis, Decrepit Birth, etc.

As for songs which are melodic and memorable:

Silence Calls the Storm by Quo Vadis is a very brutal, yet melodic song.

The Road of Salvation by Kronos has a weird non-melody thing kinda going on, but it's extremely enjoyable.

Anything by Intestine Baalism or Garden of Shadows has badass melody...

When I saw this thread title the first band that came to mind was Intestine Baalism and in particular the song "A Place Their Gods Left Behind". I've professed my love for this song before and here is another instance where it should be brought up once more, I think. The riff toward the second half of that song, oh my god, so incredibly melodic and heavy, gets me everytime.

Most of Nile's In their darkened shrines album.

I think straight Death and Black metal are pretty bad at providing catchy melodies or sometimes even traditional melodies at all. I much prefer the fist few In Flames, Dissection and Children of Bodom records.

That said, Cryptopsy's first two albums and Carcass - Necroticism definitely have some catchy melodies on them. And I agree with the Intestine Baalism suggestion. You could say that the Swedish and Finnish death metal bands had catchy melodies but really they were more riff than melody oriented in my opinion, the melodies being too short. Demigod and Cartilage would be strong contenders in that area though, both came up with a bunch of classic melodies in their melanges of death metal.

Grand Belial's Key, to me, manages to be heavy as fuck with some extremely catchy parts.

Also, they are essential simply for being so awesome.

Darkestrah craft some wonderful middle eastern tinged melodies on their newest The Great Silk Road

Dark Fortress do a great job of being heavy and catchy at the same time

Melechesh is another band who employs middle eastern melodies in Black Metal.

Youve probably heard them, but every single Dethklok song is impossibly catchy.

Amion Amarth gets stuck in my head all the time.

There is a pretty catchy lead guitar melody in Gorgoroth's "Måneskyggens
Slave".

I also think alot of Death's riffs and leads were quite melodic.

Unleashed have really catchy rhythms eg, "We Must Join With Him", "Midvinterblot", "In Victory or Defeat"

Or "Crush The Skull". The rhythm in that opening riff is nuts.

The entire first Unleashed album is applicable here. Also, whoever posted Necrophobic reminded me that the opening riff in "Ancient's Gate" gets stuck in my head all the time. Those Swedish bands wrote some catchy tunes.

edit: upon listening, I don't think the Necrophobic solo in "Sacrificial Rites" is very similar to the Phantasm theme. The intervals are different, and it certainly inspires a different mood than Entombed did. I certainly do not doubt that such horror movies influenced the band in their early days, I just think any similarity to that theme is coincidental rather than intentional.

paradise lost ; lost paradise has alot of catchy groovy melodies, also Beherit off of drawing down the moon is fucking godly.

The catchiest riff that I've heard in a DM song is the riff later in the Vital Remains' song Infidel.. I love that riff so much.

Bingo - /thread - the reason this thread exists is because of this post

Oh my! Sounds like the intro on Tormentor's Anno Domini!

the synth line that begins at 1:24 and last through 1:40 of the Old Man's Child song "...Leads To Utopia - The Old Man's Dream" from their debut album Born of the Flickering. the melody also picks back up again at 3:33 and increases at 3:50 and lasts until 4:07. flawless, and one of my favorite melody lines from all of metal.

Bolt Thrower - IVth Crusade.... the entire album.....
Their most melodic release yet remaining so bloody heavy!

Necrophagist does an amazing job in each song.
And Decapitated does a fantastic job too, especially in "The First Damned."