Introduction:
Megadeth - Holy Wars. The Punishment Due is a riff-heavy monster from thrash monsters Megadeth which gave me lots of options of riffs to choose from but I chose probably the heaviest riff in the song, and my personal favourite, played by 2 guitars using power chords and doubled by David Ellefson’s bass imitation and Nick Menza’s rhythm section. The Riff is a simple power chord progression with some low e-notes for 2 bars then for the next 2 it plays a riff from the intro, a riff combining fast slurs on the a string with pedal sixteenth note low-e notes.
Techniques:
As you can see in the transcription the first half of the riff is a F#-G-E-F#-E-E-F#-G-E-E-G-F#-E-E-F#-G
Simple to play but sometimes irritating to remember whether your on the 2nd or 3rd fret so work on memorizing the riff well and just assign one finger to the 2nd and one to the 3rd fret (I used my middle and ring fingers to execute this part.
The next part combines D to E and G to E slurs with pedalled low e notes and a G-A beat at the end. The hard part about this riff is nailing the sixteenth notes..its hard enough on a guitar so as you can imagine its challenging on bass too. I play the D to E flurry Index to Ring finger then the G to E ring finger to index and the last 2 notes of the 2nd bar I play index to middle finger.
Gear Info:
Ellefson plays Modulus Graphite 4 and 5 string basses strung with D'addario Prism Bass Strings into a Tech 21 Sans Amp PSA-1 running through Peavey cabs.
Audio & Tab:
Tempo = 152
G| ----------------- | ----------------- |
D| ----------------- | ----------------- |
A| ----------------- | ----------------- |
E| -2-3-0-2-0-0-2-3- | -0-0-3-2-0-0-2-3- |
G| --------------------------------- |
D| --------------------------------- |
A| -5h7--------10h7----------------- |
E| -----0-0-0-------0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0- |
G| --------------------------------- |
D| --------------------------------- |
A| -5h7---------5h7----------------- |
E| -----0-0-0-------0-0-0-0-3---5--- |
Click here to get a midi file of the tab above.
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