SLAYER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Angel of Death (Standard Tuning)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 26-32, 34-40 and 42-49, and 11 more places -- 23.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
210 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
243
LENGTH
4:37
DIFFICULTY
85/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 210 BPM
ANGEL OF DEATH (STANDARD TUNING) · BAR 26

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 72 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 85 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 116 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 116, 139, 163, 186 and 210 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Angel of Death (Standard Tuning) use?

A one-bar groove on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 210 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 26-32, 34-40, 42-49 and 58-64, and 10 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Angel of Death (Standard Tuning) hard?

72 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 85 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 243 BARS ANALYSED