hey welcome to 12tone!
I don't get to talk about it much on this channel, but honestly, the main reason I'm
a musician at all is because of my love of metal.
when I went to music school, it wasn't to study theory, it was to become a metal singer.
that ultimately wasn't the path I wound up taking, but I still have a soft spot in my
heart for the genre, and today I thought I'd honor that by looking at one of the first
metal songs I ever heard, Metallica's Enter Sandman.
it's a dark, twisted take on a lullaby, and as the first single off the Black Album, it
marks a pivotal moment in Metallica's history, where they started to move away from the blazing
fast thrash metal sound of their early work into the slower, heavier style that would
come to define their later career.
so what makes it so heavy?
well, let's take it apart.
(tick tick tick tick tock)
like a lot of the Black Album, Enter Sandman is, at heart, a one-riff song.
that is, rather than writing a new part for each section, they instead took a single riff
and manipulated it in different ways, building the sections out of different variations of
that initial starting point.
with that in mind, I'm gonna break with tradition: normally I start from the beginning of the
song and work through it from there, but this time I'm gonna skip ahead to around a minute
in, because that's where we first hear this: (bang) this is the full riff, and yes, I included
the drums: I normally don't bother, but honestly it just doesn't sound like Enter Sandman without
them.
they're such a huge part of the mix, and they give the song this massive, thunderous quality,
so it felt wrong to leave them out.
that's not to say it's a particularly complicated drum part: it's a pretty standard rock beat,
with the kick on beats 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, hi-hats playing 8th notes, and the
occasional cymbal for emphasis (bang) but it lays a really important foundation for
the rest of the song, and changes in the drum groove are a large part of how they differentiate
between sections.
but let's talk about the riff itself.
rhythmically, the whole thing is built on what's called an anticipation: instead of
landing on beat 1, the first note of each bar hits an 8th-note early, giving the riff
a sort of lurching effect.
if we take that out we get this (bang) which…
actually still sounds kinda cool? it's got, like, a dance metal vibe to it that I'm into,
but it's definitely a very different feel and it doesn't fit with what the song is trying
to do.
the anticipation gives you this strong sense of punctuation at the start of each bar, like
a little punch to your eardrums that adds to the aggressive feel of the riff. but if
it's always starting an 8th-note early, how do we know it's early at all?
maybe I just notated it wrong and this is where the bar's supposed to start.
well, that's where the drums come back into play: again, it's such a simple pattern that
it's almost impossible to misidentify the beat.
here, check out what happens if I shift the drum groove to align with that start: (bang)
again, still cool, but not at all the same.
structurally, this riff can be broken up into two parts.
the first part is the body: (bang) this is the real meat of the riff: they play it three
times in a row, and it's the most recognizable part of the song.
so how does it work?
well, honestly it feels pretty harmonic to me: the structure is outlining a chord progression.
we've got this low E power chord and this high E, and since we're pretty clearly in
the key of E this implies the I chord, then we hang on this A for a while, implying a
IV chord. going back and forth between I and IV is a pretty common vamp, because IV adds
instability and dissonance without really pointing us anywhere, so we get movement without
a lot of resolution.
we're not just sitting on the root, 'cause that'd be boring, but we're also not doing
anything that'd give us too strong a sense of finality.
but what about this middle note?
well, that's a Bb, because you can't spell metal without tritones.
seriously, give it a shot.
you can't do it, it's impossible.
anyway, tritones are generally considered the most dissonant interval in standard tuning,
with the possible exception of the minor second, so they're great for making your music sound
dark and evil. in fact, they've even been historically associated with the devil, so
naturally they're all over the place in metal music.
here, though, it's doing more than just being generically dissonant: it's also serving as
an approach note.
we're falling from E down to A, but just going straight there is boring, so dropping to a
Bb instead and then sliding down from there makes it feel a little spicier.
after three times through the body of the riff, we wrap up with the tag: (bang) here,
I think the harmonic effect sort of falls back a bit and the riff becomes more melodic,
which is ironic 'cause unlike the body, most of the tag is played as power chords.
there's still some harmony: this G, for instance, puts us in the mind of the bIII chord, which
can do a lot of different things, but here I think the most important part is that it's
directly below the IV chord. we've been oscillating between I and IV, so now it's like we're going
for the IV again but falling a little bit short.
this is a kind of analysis called proximate harmony: it's not really about the chords'
qualities, or functions, or anything fancy like that, it's just about their positions.
it's kind of like the middle ground between harmony and melody, and it's often useful
for breaking down riffs.
anyway, from there we get this: (bang) which is just straight-up melodic.
again, you can look at these as chords, and if you do then you'll probably want to apply
that same proximate harmony approach, but honestly I think these top notes are almost
entirely irrelevant to what's happening here.
we're just walking around the bottom of the scale.
this is in stark contrast to the body of the riff, which is jumping all over the place,
and again it's worth noting that no part of this melody goes above the b3, which means
the 4 from the main body is acting almost as a sort of ceiling, pushing this section
down as low as it can.
this all serves to create a sort of anchor point, tying us down for a second so the return
to the main riff feels all that much more explosive.
that sentences mixed like three different metaphors at once, and none of them actually
make sense together, but you get my point.
tense, restrained interludes help prevent the big, crashy bits from getting monotonous.
with that out of the way, let's look at how the song transforms this riff in order to
milk five and a half minutes out of what is, in effect, two bars of music.
we'll start at the beginning (bang) where we immediately notice a couple changes.
first of all, it's a clean guitar tone, and the drums are just playing hi-hats on the
back beat.
this is our first exposure to the riff, and they're going out of their way to avoid showing
the full energy of it right away.
but it's more than just instrumentation: the riff itself is different.
on beat 4 we're supposed to have a low E, but instead we get a high one.
this gives us a big, dramatic drop down to the low E on the upbeat, further emphasizing
the anticipation.
somewhat more subtly, after the first note, instead of a low E and a high E, we jump straight
to that high E and use the extra space to add in a G too.
this does a couple things: first, it gives us the 3rd of the key, so we know we're in
minor.
again, this is the very beginning of the song so it's worth laying out ground rules.
the other thing it does, though, is mellow out the impact of the Bb a bit. in the main
riff, we drop from E to Bb, which is a tritone, but here, we're going from G to Bb instead,
a major 6th. it's still a dissonant note in the key, but they're easing us into it.
again, you don't want to give too much away right off the top.
this also helps explain the last difference: there's no tag. they just loop this modified
version of the body over and over.
effectively, they're holding it back to give them something to build up to.
besides, the tag is there to make the body more explosive, and this intro's not really
trying to explode.
it's setting the stage for what's to come, but it's keeping a few tricks up its sleeve
for later.
from there Lars Ulrich's drums kick in with this (bang) where he's just pounding away
on the toms. this gives it an insistent, driving pulse, but importantly, there's no cymbals
here, no hi-hat, no snare, no high end drums of any kind.
later in the section, Ulrich uses some snares and cymbals for accents, but they're not really
a structural part of the groove.
concentrating everything on the lower end of the kit makes this feel almost like a volcano:
the pressure's building underground, and occasionally it erupts which, to continue the metaphor,
would be those snare accents he plays sometimes.
they're few and far between, though, making the whole first minute of the song feel incredibly
tense until it all releases when the main drum groove comes crashing in with the riff.
we're not there yet, though.
first we have to go through the incredibly long build-up.
after the clean intro, Kirk Hammett turns on his distortion and starts building the
full riff again piece by piece, starting with this: (bang) which probably doesn't remind
you much of the riff, because it's not.
it's just a series of low Es, played with a technique called a palm mute where you press
the side of your hand into the strings so they can't vibrate as much, dulling the sound
and preventing it from really ringing out.
we get these high Es occasionally as decoration, accenting the last 8th-note of each bar, which
is a nice allusion to the anticipations that are coming, but by and large this bit isn't
so much a riff as it is a blank canvas.
it's what Hammett builds the riff on top of.
from there we get this (bang) and we see the first pieces fall into place.
specifically, we have the high E and the Bb, giving us the tritone. this is really interesting
to me: the first thing you add should be the most structurally important part, and I'd
have assumed that was the A, but putting the tritone first says that what really matters
here isn't the harmonic structure, it's the darkness.
it's the evil.
dissonance comes first, and only out of that dissonance do we get structure.
the other thing that's changed is the last attack: it's an F power chord, one of the
few musical ideas in the whole song that can't really be traced back to the riff. so what's
it doing? well, again, we're accenting this 8th note as a reference to the anticipation,
and while the high E was doing that just fine in the last section, now we've already got
one of those earlier in the riff so another one would sound redundant.
we need something different in order to really stand out.
but why F specifically?
well, remember how I said the only interval that's debatably more dissonant than the tritone
is the minor 2nd?
well, uh… guess what F is in the key of E. yeah. this also puts it right above the
root, so from a proximate harmony standpoint, it gives a little sense of lift before we
fall back into the next bar.
after a bit of that, we continue building with this: (bang) where two things have changed:
first, we have our A, which means the basic structure of our riff is complete.
the other thing to note, though, is that in this section Ulrich starts playing a snare
to accompany every F chord. this tells us our rhythmic volcano is ready to blow: there's
no cymbals yet, but it's getting really hard to hold back the coming explosion.
after a couple bars he starts playing the snare on every beat, building up in a giant
crescendo that eventually leads us into our complete riff, which we already talked about
so let's skip ahead.
the next section is the verse: (bang) where the drums keep the groove going but the guitar
falls back into that palm-mute pattern to make space for the vocals.
however, unlike in the intro, the verse keeps the tag: after three bars of palm mutes, we
get that same walk through the bottom of the scale.
unlike in the riff, though, where the tag exists as a sort of break from the high-energy
body, here the tag is the release, because it's being set against an even more restrained
pattern.
it's a good example of how context affects perception: the section as a whole is more
subdued, so by comparison, the same set of notes, played the same way, take on a very
different meaning.
it's also worth noting that they're using the F power chord accent again, contrasting
with the F# in the tag for more tension and a stronger release.
from there we go into the pre-chorus (bang) where the drums switch to a half-time feel,
playing the snare on beat 3 instead of beats 2 and 4. this makes the section feel slower
even though the tempo hasn't changed, and it serves as a sort of rhythmic palette cleanser
before the chorus.
meanwhile, the guitar goes back to playing the variation of the riff from the intro where
they add a minor 3rd, except this time they've taken the whole thing and shifted it up a
whole-step so instead of E, it's built on F# now.
most of the sources I looked at called this a key change to F# minor, which makes a lot
of sense to me: these sorts of key changes, where you just take the thing you're already
playing and shift all the notes up a step are called direct modulations, and they're
a great way to give yourself a little more variety, which you really need when your whole
song is built on one riff.
that said, I do have a different explanation for this shift, but first let's look at the
chorus: (bang) specifically, let's look at this part in the middle, where they play some
sort of F# chord, then some sort of B chord, then some sort of E chord which, for the jazz
fans in the audience, should be setting off alarm bells: it's a II-V-I. this is one of
those rare pieces of music theory where the name actually tells you exactly what you're
dealing with: a II-V-I is when you play the II chord, then the V chord, then the I chord.
this is a really powerful progression because it quickly cycles through all three primary
chord functions, and if you don't know what that means, don't worry, the important part
is it's a way to set up a really strong resolution.
so is that what's happening here? did we never actually leave E? was the whole pre-chorus
just a prolongated II-V?
mmmm, no. or at least that's not how I hear it: by the time we make it to the E chord,
we've been on F# for so long that it doesn't really feel like I anymore.
plus the melody in these sections has G#s, which means if we are in E then we're in major,
which doesn't seem right.
still, the longer I do these analyses, the more convinced I become that every explanation
has value, even if it's not actually the best one.
so what can we learn from this II-V analysis?
well, I think it tells us why this key change feels so smooth.
normally, direct modulations are jarring: think, for instance, of the last chorus of
Bon Jovi's Living On A Prayer. if you know the song, you know exactly which part I'm
talking about: it's stunningly obvious where the key change takes place.
that's the point.
but here, even though we're doing the exact same thing, the transition feels pretty natural,
and I think that's because the II-V analysis makes enough sense at first that by the time
our ears abandon it we've already gotten used to the new key.
it's not what's happening, but the fact that it could be what's happening helps hide the
seam. this sleight of hand is aided by the fact that the harmony isn't really harmony:
in a minor II-V, we'd expect the F# chord to be diminished, whereas in a key change
it'd be minor, but since the pre-chorus riff doesn't have any C#s, it can sorta be both
at once, and the C natural almost makes the II-V version sound correct until we get to
the chorus, where the power chord comes back, clearly establishing the key change as the
best answer.
speaking of which, let's look at the chorus.
it features a simplified version of the riff, where the high F# is replaced with just holding
the power chord a bit longer.
(bang) this really emphasizes the harmonic aspect of the riff: we're basically just going
back and forth between the I chord and the IV chord, and unlike elsewhere the IV is a
power chord too.
the only nod we have to the more melodic side of things is this C natural, 'cause we're
not just gonna abandon the tritone.
what are we, benedictine monks?
anyway, at first the tag is replaced with this long held E chord, which in this context
is the bVII, introducing a new harmonic element.
the bVII can serve a pretty similar role to the IV chord, providing some directionless
instability in order to keep things moving.
after that, we go back into the riff but this time we only play it once before falling back
into that E again, like the song doesn't like being in F# and we're being pulled back to
our original key, an effect that's finalized when we get the classic tag from the riff
(bang) setting us back up in the key of E minor.
from there we get another verse and chorus, with the only real difference being the addition
of a series of guitar fills in the verse played through a wah pedal.
having something new the second time around helps keep the section interesting without
really changing its composition.
then we get a massive solo that plays over basically every iteration of the riff we've
seen so far, and at the end of that we wind up in the breakdown, where the clean guitar
riff from the beginning comes back over the same pounding drums while James Hetfield does
a spoken call and response version of a common bedtime prayer, recontextualizing the traditionally
innocent rhyme and pointing out just how creepy it actually is.
like, "if I die before I wake"?
why are we teaching kids to plan for the chance that they die in their sleep? isn't that,
like, actually super weird?
right?
ok, I digress.
from there Hetfield switches back into his metal voice in order to sing a twisted version
of another traditional lullaby, but with the words changed to be darker and more threatening,
once again contrasting innocent imagery with the narrative context of just, like, being
in a metal song.
this time it's less subtly creepy and more overtly evil, which is emphasized by the guitar
turning the distortion back on and shifting the riff up to F#, the chorus key.
innocence is over.
that builds up until we crash back into a final chorus, after which we end by slowly
disassembling the riff, like we did in the intro but backwards.
we start here (bang) bring back the palm mutes (bang) then drop the 4th (bang) and then we
make the ultimate sacrifice and remove the tritone, keeping just the high E: (bang) and
then we just… fade to sleep.
or fade to Sad But True if you're listening to the album, but that's not as good a metaphor,
is it?
and that's it, but before you go, quick update: last month I mentioned these new music notebooks
I made, with staff paper on one side and college rule on the other, for taking notes in music
class or just doing songwriting stuff, and after that announcement went up they sold
out in a little over a week, so I just wanted to let y'all know we got a new order in.
if you missed them last time or you just want another, there's a link to my merch store
in the description.
you can pick them up there, and if we manage to sell out again, I promise we'll get an
even bigger order next time!
and hey, thanks for watching! this song was chosen by my patrons over on Patreon, so if
you want to help pick the next song we analyze just head on over to Patreon and pledge at
any level! you can also join our mailing list to find out about new episodes, like, share,
comment, subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.