Metal [or, at least the metal I listen to] is a simple genre, and if a large part of your riffage is confined to a palm muted e string and simple tremolo picked minor scales of questionable originality, there are bound to be a few accidental rip-offs here and there (and everywhere). So I’m not out here trying to accuse Riot of Ripping off Venom’s “Welcome to Hell” with their bouncy “Swords and Tequila” riff–I’m looking for more egregious abuses of songwriting laziness today.
Honorable Mention: Bathory’s viking phase
It’s not fair to criticize Bathory for playing in the “style” of another band, after all, we aren’t out here criticizing black metal bands for playing the “style” of Bathory. However, two things make this one stand out. First, (I have been led to believe that) Quorthon claims he had never even HEARD Manowar before he went full-Viking, and second, while the songs are different enough to not be straight rip-offs, it’s pretty goddamn obvious that Manowar, and specifically their Sign of the Hammer album were direct influences on Bathory’s three Viking albums.
Manowar’s “Thor (The Powerhead)” could fit right into Hammerheart:
Even the same epic choir effect as Bathory’s most famous Viking ode “One Rode to Asa Bay”:
Everyone rips off Burzum, even Moonblood
Moonblood is a mid-paced German black metal band with a legendary reputation in the metal underground for cold riffs and more rehearsal demos than you can shake a paycheck at. Unlike bands like Mysteries, Bilskirnir, Wigrid, Evilfeast, Drudkh, and a couple hundred others, Moonblood doesn’t really sound like Burzum aside from being raw and thoughtfully composed black metal. However, Moonblood decided to go ahead and lift Burzum’s most famous keyboard line, right down to the synth sound for their song “In Bloody Night of Fullmoon”:
If you haven’t already listed to it a thousand times, the section I’m talking about is from “Det Som Engang Var” at around 3:50:
W.A.S.P. Copying Maiden’s Homework for their “SERIOUS” album
It happens to a lot of bands. Not satisfied with their earlier, best material, they have to go and put out an album like Cure’s Disintegration to prove they are REAL musicians that take their shit SERIOUSLY. Usually, it does not end up being an improvement, but sometimes, as with Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, it can at least be AS good as their earlier stuff (which, considering their catalog, is pretty goddamn impressive). W.A.S.P. on the other hand was never going to match the raw ferocity of their debut, so their SERIOUS album The Headless Children was a less impressive musical odyssey than Seventh Son. As for the rip-off parts, this one is only vaguely the same, but it is included because they are both openers to “artistic” late-period albums for the bands and only a year apart. Not only did the W.A.S.P.’s “The Heretic” seem to open with the same general riff sequence as Maiden’s “Moonchild”, but it was even a song about a child (a “Lost Child” to be exact):
Again, the songs end up going different places, but the opening of The Headless Children always makes me think “huh, did they just copy “Moonchild?”
Burzum rips bands off too
Being the most copied black metal band of all time doesn’t mean you might not have lifted a riff or two. And Burzum’s infamous song about “huh, WAR!” (along with Czech Madmen Root’s song “Píseň pro Satana”) pretty clearly copied Bathory’s “Necromansy” [sic]. You can hear the original Bathory song here:
Followed by Root:
And finally Burzum:
Again, this is just a simple minor scale sequence, the kind of thing countless metalheads have discovered while practicing scales on their guitars, but I suspect, intentional or not, Varg and Big Boss copied “Necromansy” a little more closely than their usual level of Bathory worship.
Black Metal’s Witch Burning song lineage
Here we are, back to black metal’s most copied artist, and, as it turns out, a man who also happens to be one of black metal’s most shameless copiers. This time, rather than just lifting a style, Quorthon lifted an entire song almost riff for riff (and even kept the same lyrical content!) And I’m sorry, but this isn’t the discovery of calculus, if your band sounds exactly like Venom, and then you make a song that exactly copies a Venom song…and you have the balls to say you’d never heard Venom? A bold play (but, as it ended up, it did turn out for him).
Anyway, here’s the original Venom song “Don’t Burn the witch”:
Here’s Bathory’s “Born for Burning”:
And, bonus rip-off, here’s Incarnator’s “Nordic Holocaust” (they at least had the sense to change the lyrical subject matter!):
If you are goin to rip-off a song, don’t rip-off the most famous metal song of all time
To be fair, my quick google searching found no interviews from The Rods acknowledging that they straight up copied the most famous metal song of all time. Maybe it was meant to be a cover! On the other hand, I also saw no acknowledgements of anything of the sort in the liner notes, so I’m going to just assume that they hoped no one would notice that their song “Bad Blood”:
Was 100% just “Breaking the Law” from Wish:
They didn’t want to make it too obvious though, they also stole the intro from Judas Priest’s “Hellion/Electric Eye” in the hopes it would throw us off the scent:
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