Killchain · Bolt Thrower

132 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 3:18 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

Metal150 BPM and up
TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
132
LENGTH
3:18
DIFFICULTY
69/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 26% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 22-24, 26-28 and 31-32, and 13 more places -- 26% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 160 BPM
KILLCHAIN · BAR 22
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

8 fills to learn, played 20 times: bars 15, 37, 39, 45, 61, 67 and 14 more.

LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 15 · LANDS ON BAR 16 · PLAYED 5 TIMES
LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 37 · LANDS ON BAR 38 · PLAYED 5 TIMES
LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 45 · LANDS ON BAR 46
LOOP · 160 BPM
BARS 69-71 · LANDS ON BAR 72 · PLAYED 3 TIMES

4 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

132 bars across 10 sections: 91 keep time, 20 are fills, 6 are stops and 5 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 1-14.

PART A
CHORUS
PART H
PART A
CHORUS 2
PART H
PART D
OUTRO
6 groovesEHADS2+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Killchain?

160 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Killchain hard to play on drums?

69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 37 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

132 bars, about 3:18 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 34 exercises over 9 sittings, about 29 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Killchain?

8 fills to learn, played 20 times: bars 15, 37, 39, 45, 61, 67 and 14 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 132 BARS ANALYSED
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