Holy Wars…The Punishment Due

It’s nice to change things up. I don’t do a lot of plectrum playing and I never get to play metal so this is a real challenge/treat. Taken from THE BEST thrash metal album of the 90s, this is a 6 min epic with plenty of downpicking and palm muting, bassists can do that, right?

For a lot of the song the bass follows the guitar part which means fast picking and lots of hammer ons/pull offs. Take your time with this one, start slow, make sure you’re playing it right and work up to the original tempo (around 162bpm). What really helped me was playing along with the isolated drum track on youtube. Hearing the drums clearly makes it much easier to lock in with your right hand. It took me a few days of practise to get this one down, and I still make 3 mistakes in the video!

Pay attention to where I’m downpicking in the video, it’ll help with getting the feel. Most rock/metal bass playing requires focused aggression (playing wise). Playing hard enough that the tone and feel is right but also nailing the rhythmical elements. There’s an isolated drums and bass version of this on youtube. I recommend searching it out for a clinic in thrash metal bass and drums. Rock solid.

This was recorded on my custom built 5 String with Aguilar DCB pickups and an Aguilar OBP-3 preamp. I used a fairly thin plectrum. I had the neck pickup on full and a tiny bit of bridge pickup to add a bit of top end. I boosted the mids fully with the push/pull pot pulled up. I went straight into logic and used the SVT simulated amp with these settings:

Full poweramp gain and some added high mids and treble to bring out the plectrum sound. I then added some fairly heavy compression (vintage FET mode) and blended in a little of the Double Dragon overdrive. I added a noise gate as there was a slight hiss from the overdrive/gain stages.

Thanks for reading. If you like the song, make your own video and tag me on social media, @jproudbass on twitter and instagram.

Till next week.

Click here to download PDF transcription