Courtesy of Guitar World.com

One of my prime objectives when writing music for my band Revocation is to try to push the envelope and come up with sounds, ideas, chord patterns, progressions and riffs that have been rarely explored within the thrash metal genre.

A good way to do this is to use seventh chords, which are rarely heard in metal. This month, I’d like to demonstrate a few cool ways one can use one particularly cool- and tense-sounding seventh chord in heavy, thrash-style riffs.


Of the different types of seventh chords—major-seven, dominant-seven, minor-seven and what have you—the one that appeals to me most is minor-seven-flat-five (m7b5), also known as half-diminished-seven.