LOCKED AND LOADED

Matt chooses his top three Bullet For My Valentine riffs

SUFFOCATING UNDER WORDS OF SORROW (WHAT CAN I DO) THE POISON (2005)

“It’s fast-paced, quite old school and thrashy. It has a proper melody; you can almost treat it as a vocal melody. Some places where we’ve played the song, like Japan, everyone sings the riff, which is cool. It springs to mind because it’s iconic, and it really takes me back to that era of the band.”

WAKING THE DEMON SCREAM AIM FIRE (2008)

“again, it’s fast, it’s thrashy, it’s not super-complicated. a lot of the work goes into the right hand, rather than the fretboard hand. It’s aggressive, and it’s kind of one of those riffs where if I was learning to play guitar and wanted to be in a metal band, a song like that would be one I’d focus on and try and learn to get my hands moving quickly.”

PIECE OF ME GRAVITY (2018)

“The polar opposite to the previous two – it’s about groove, weight, simplicity and repetitiveness, really. It’s more of a droning sound. That’s what makes it so special. We felt we’d done all the fast, thrashy, complex stuff a million times in the past, which was great, and it’s something we all love, but this time around we wanted to do something that was far more foundation-based.”