Today we’ll be covering Arch Enemy’s powerful song vultures off of their album Rise of the Tyrant. This episode of How to Write Melodic Death Metal will focus entirely on the intro for the song and give us the opportunity to discuss tapping and the harmonic minor scale. The tapping technique used here allows Arch Enemy to play through the chord tone triads of the bass implied chords (a technique called chord tone soloing). On certain measures, Arch Enemy utilizes the harmonic minor scale and the diminished chord that goes with it in order to get a very dark and somewhat creepy sound. This episode is a good warm-up for some of the more complex uses of the harmonic minor scale that Arch Enemy will employ later in the song. Finally, this song employs a nice and subtle tempo change as well. We’ll pick up with the next part of this song in a week and spend some serious time breaking it down and leaving no stone unturned when it comes to how to write melodic death metal like this.
