This one is the worst I know!!! I love the song but the main chord in the beginning always sounds like it goes backwards, and then once vocals kicks in the in the verse I know whats going on. Notice; I have no trouble understanding the chorus, which is the same riff. The problem is how the riff starts, and it just sounds "weird" to me.
There's really nothing weird with it but...


Here's another one that almost always gets me confused until the drumming kicks in during the intro.
But it's certainly not as bad as Pendragon:


Here's another one that I USED to get fucking confused by... But I understand it now. Hahaha.


Anymore?

It was quite few years ago, but i remember Judas Priest's United to be very tricky: the riff was incredibly simple, but the coordination with the drums was hard to get properly

Old Tyr had a lot of super simple, winding riffs that.. aren't simple to play at all: the intros of songs like Brother's Bane, Lord of Lies, Ride to Hel.. are all pretty long and have a lot of strange grooves that are hard to get

"Master of Puppets" has some bizarre timing in its 3rd riff (the one with the downpicking). The first three measures are in 4/4 time, but the fourth is in...21/32!

Here's a video that explains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRBmavn6Wk0

I doubt that James Hetfield is such a musical genius that he intended it to be in 21/32. My guess is that he tracked a riff, liked it, and everyone kind of worked around it.

Strange that nobody else in the band ever said "dude, there's a missing 32nd".



A shame you're not a 17 year old boy, or Dave Holland might have given you lessons in person.

..I had to check out Holland's page. What the hell, i wasn't aware!

Ea, Lord of the Deep's guitar track for me. Dead simple but it goes over my head every time. I'm not too good of a guitarist which might contribute.



Breaking the law, breaking the law...

Another super obvious answer, but I think almost all of the Hellhammer/Celtic Frost discography fits this bill. Tom G. Warrior is the master of writing simple, barbaric riffs that at the same time are cryptic and non-conventional.

Man, I made a thread about something like this years ago and everyone said I was crazy/had no idea what I was talking about.

EDIT: I was looking for my thread but I think the mods actually hated it so much that they sent it to The Landfill.

The worst one is “For My Demons” by Katatonia. It starts with two syncopated guitars playing chords which are supposed to have the same tempo/time signature as the full-band main riff at 0:26. But unless I try really hard to hear it, because of the panning of the guitar tracks, it just sounds like aimless noodling in waltz time with a delay effect. I literally had to splice the song in Audacity and stack the clean guitar onto the main riff to figure out what the hell they were trying to do. Weird stuff.

iron maiden innocent exile and quest for fire the intro riffs

Isn't this what people call "syncopation" or at least a type of it? The OP makes it sound like they are playing it wrong.

Well usually with these songs the problem isn’t just that there’s syncopation, but some weird mixing decision or arranging mistake. The Judas Priest song linked doesn’t have the kick or hi-hats high enough in the mix, which would provide enough emphasis on the downbeat to keep listeners from hearing the song in an awkward, unintended way. The Katatonia song I linked doesn’t emphasize its weak and strong notes properly, compounds the problem by splitting the chords across two tracks, and has no percussion to anchor the guitars around. So they’re not playing it wrong, but you could argue that it’s still the band’s fault.

I did always wonder about that particular riff, whenever I listened to it the timing did always seem a bit off. Glad I'm not the only one.

YES!!!! These absoutely fits the bill, I knew somewhere back in my head there was some Iron Maiden songs but yeah, these are good example!

I know what that is, I'm a musician.

But that doesn't help when a song doesn't have a "count in".
Thats the issue with these three in the OP.
There's no "count in" so you dont really hear where the actual beat is.

It's not a problem on for example this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlicNcNeQ8o

You hear exactly whats going on.

Compare that to "Pendragon" from same album, I link in the OP.

The riff is the same as in the chorus. But it somehow feels like it's reversed in the intro.
But it's not.

The snare plays 1-3, but it sounds like it plays 2-4... but in the chorus you have some beat reference thanks to the bridge, so you know where the 1-2-3-4 starts before chorus, and during the chorus the riff does not feel "backwards"

Nah, not sure this counts. It doesn't "fuck" with my brain...
If so, I would rather say Fight Fire With Fire:

First riff is easy to understand once it kicks in.
But then comes "riff #2" and I'm completely lost where the beat goes. I mean it sounds fucking awesome but it somehow "turns around" and then the same thing happens when 2nd verse comes in after 1st chorus

Also, where did you get from that james tracked his guitars BEFORE drums??

Don't know if it's the poor production, but the intro to Kreator's "Total Death" still throws me off a bit.

He's going to ram it down alright...

I never tried to learn United, but I had that exact problem with Heading to the Highway. If I recall correctly, the chords are on 3 and rather than 1, 3, or 4.

I shouldn't have said "tracked", what I meant is he probably brought that riff in on a cassette tape and made everyone play along to it.

Here's an interesting article about the recording of Master, it had some stuff I didn't know: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20160302

Apparently Flemming Rasmussen made them downtune for certain parts so he could speed up the tape, adding extra tightness. (Similar to what happened for "For Whom the Bell Tolls", except Master of Puppets is actually in E).

It's not a James riff, it's a Kirk riff.

This isn't quite as bad as some of those, especially that Katatonia one, but when the second riff comes in in Pentagram's "Death Row" from "Relentless", it sounds like they play the open-string chugging part FOUR times the first time in the transition from the first to the second riff before playing the end of the riff, and each subsequent playing of the riff they play the low chugging part THREE times, which is how the riff makes sense as an 8-beat duration. In other words, it always throws me off when the riff first comes in because it is 10 beats and not 8!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XicyJnv_8Ds (see around 0:17).

Not as bad as the others, but still, how weird.

Pretty much every riff on "Rocka Rolla", but particularly the main riff from "Cheater". Not only is it the same riff from "Saints in Hell" but it's just got this weirdly hypnotic way of building up tension without release.

You have to be a young age to be Dave Holland's Turbo Lover.

Ok just checked it out, and I understand what yeah mean... even tho it just took me a few seconds to know what was going on, so I didn't have an issue with this one.
But I see how some other people can misunderstand it!

How can you not respond to my post about the album Rocka Rolla?

That one in Unholy Cult. I think you know the one.

That one riff towards the end of "Forgotten in Space" (the one that Ectovoid ripped off on "Precipice of Absolute Chaos"). Simple riff, but something about the way the notes are emphasized melts my brain if I try to play it to a click.

Please let me in on this. Used to own the album, but listening to it just to find "the one" is a bit much.

Kill With Hate's riff from Inquisition fits this bill for me. Mostly one very simple riff the whole song, but the drumming changes here and there and the riff stays interesting.

Neurosis - The Doorway. Simple in the best way. Absolutely crushing and apocalyptic. Neurosis are masters at that.

I think I get this - Bruce Dickinson's Space Race from Skunkworks - the clean intro riff is pretty much the same as the full band verse riff after it (main riff has same rhythm but more notes) but it sounds weird because there's no drum to set the beat.

Another Iron Maiden one, Back in the Village.

This thread is great-- it's definitely something I've noticed, but didn't feel I could put into words

Metallica - Motobreath...monster of a riff

Two synth intros that kinda have this effect
Stratovarius - dreamspace
X japan- rusty nail