"Into the Pit" by Testament, "Laid to Rest" by Lamb of God, and "My Plague" by Kittie all start out with more or less the same riff.

(edit) You can also tell where Burzum's song "War" came from; it's a pretty obvious tribute to Bathory's "Necromansy" on the first album.

Kai “shamelessly tributes” alot. Particularly from Queen.

Gabber wrote:

And from Maiden

I seem to recall Nile shamelessly stealing a Candlemass riff.

Re-title thread to 'riffs that Kai Hansen HASN'T stolen' ?

Apparently there's a story floating around where Testament gave LoG their blessing to use the riff.

I don't think Kai can really be considered "under the radar" when he founded two of the biggest, most important, and longest lasting power metal bands in the scene. and more words

No doubt whatsoever that When The World is replicated from Flash Of The Blade. Even when the drums kick in after the initial few bars - it's too similar to dismiss.

Yeah but aside from laughs at Dragonforce and Guitar Hero mainstream American doesn't know anything about power metal. Someone brought up the Vanilla Ice example and how he got royally fucked by Queen (as he should have, fuck him) and then there's what happened with Coldplay and Joe Satriani, or a Mark Ronson and whoever claimed that he ripped off Uptown Funk.

The "quiet for the last few years" argument doesn't really work either cos this is something he's done, as people have mentioned, his whole career. If All of The Damned or No Stranger or Short As Hell became big rock hits, I'd be shocked if there weren't legal ramifications following whatever fame came with it as a result of Kai doing this over the years.

And it certainly helps that he never bases entire songs around lifted ideas. It's always just a riff here or there and nothing more, your best argument is probably that Solid and Rapid Fire are super close the whole time but even then neither song is a particularly popular one from either Gamma Ray or Judas Priest. I'm not saying that means it's not shitty to do (especially when Kai is so obviously capable of writing his own material), but I'm saying that everything can be reasonably explained as a mere tribute to one of his heroes. It never seems malicious, basically every example of a lifted riff he's got is from a band a million times more commercially successful than he is, he clearly has his own identity, he really just seems like a fun loving metal nerd who throws in little easter eggs for other metal nerds and nobody seriously begrudges him for it because it's always harmless fun from one of the most important pioneers in a niche subgenre.

The worst one for me was always Papa Roach lifting the closing riff from Iron Maiden's "Ghengis Khan" and basing their entire first hit single "Last Resort" on that plagiarized riff. Which should tell you something about the quality of Papa Roach's songwriting abilities.

Testament got Into the Pit from Ulysses Siren's Lake of Fire anyways.