‘Creeping Death’: The greatest riff James Hetfield wrote for Metallica
Most of Metallica’s musical vocabulary comes back to songs centred around a riff. Despite some of their heroes being artists like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, the finesse that James Hetfield brought to every single song he played was on the same level as old blues musicians who looked to write the most menacing music that they could. At the end of the day, though, riffs are always a rhythmic thing, and Hetfield’s crowning achievement always comes back to what he did on ‘Creeping Death’.
Going through all of the riffs in their back catalogue, though, you can practically hear them getting tougher over time. The entirety of Kill Em All tends to look cute these days because of how juvenile some of the lyrics are, but considering how strong a tune like ‘Seek and Destroy’ is, it’s not like they didn’t have that magic from the beginning.
If you look at Hetfield’s role in the band, he was almost the timekeeper in the old days compared to what Lars Ulrich would do. It didn’t take much for people to realise that Ulrich was far from the greatest to pick up two sticks, but if he was trying to put in as many drum fills as possible, then Hetfield had to be the one laying down a solid foundation for everything else to stand on.
And in the case of ‘Creeping Death’, only Hetfield could manage to make a riff exciting based on only one chord. Although the song moves in different directions throughout the piece, the verse riff is still one of the most intricate creations he ever made, complete with a little tail at the end of the lick that’s practically a musical snakebite. If you know anything about Hetfield, that means getting used to a lot of downpicking.
There usually wasn’t that much rhyme or reason to how someone picked the guitar in the 1960s, but with Hetfield using all downstrokes, ‘Creeping Death’ becomes an endurance test for anyone who picks up the guitar. Despite ‘Master of Puppets’ being a longer piece to master, there’s no melodic section to give one’s wrist a break, meaning that Hetfield had to use every bit of strength in his body to make the riff work.
That’s before even getting to when they played the song live. Anyone can be running on adrenaline come showtime, and since Ulrich was known to gradually speed up the tempo whenever he was performing, that meant that Hetfield had to pull off the kind of picking performance that would have made most people’s hands fall off their bodies in sheer fatigue.
Though the technique is certainly impressive, the fact that Hetfield can sing and pull off everything is proof of why he is the greatest frontman in metal. Despite never liking his own voice, there’s no one else who could have led the chant of ‘DIE’ in the breakdown of the tune where he talks about the plagues of Egypt and the spirit of death coming to kill the firstborn of every man.
‘Creeping Death’ might be a difficult song to tackle, but somewhere in between those downstrokes is the secret to Hetfield’s genius. Anyone can find the time to play the track right, but in terms of playing it up to speed, Hetfield has the kind of picking technique that’s worthy of an Olympic athlete.
