Creeping Death

What is the Creeping Death guitar tone?

The Creeping Death guitar tone is a crunchy, open-chord thrash riff, heard on Metallica's 1980s thrash metal recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Metallica reportedly tracked it with the Gibson Explorer that James Hetfield told Guitar World in 2009 he had by the time of Ride the Lightning, a shape he says he grew to love better than the V, though Ground Guitar says he played his Electra Flying V copy on the band's first two albums, and quotes him saying it felt like Ride the Lightning when he plugged it in again years later; Guitar.com says he bought a new Marshall JMP 2203 before the album, to replace the modded Marshall stolen in Boston, and drove it a little harder with an old Ibanez Tube Screamer, while Kirk Hammett remembers producer Flemming Rasmussen calling the music stores in Copenhagen to bring down all their Marshalls and the band using a great-sounding head that belonged to a player in another band, dubbed the Best Sounding Marshall in Denmark, for most of the album; for this song Hammett said in the same 2009 interview that he was still using his black Flying V and a Boss distortion pedal through Marshall amps with a TC Electronic EQ, and that Rasmussen suggested double-tracking the solo to make it thicker and fuller, though in a later Guitar World interview he said there has been a Tube Screamer for the solos on Ride the Lightning and every album since; Rasmussen told Tape Op the album went to 24-track tape through his Trident A Range console, with a Shure SM7 and a Neumann U87 close on the center of one speaker cone, most guitars recorded through two cabinets with an AKG The Tube on each at 45 degrees and three to six feet away, and Brüel & Kjær 4006 room mics 10 to 15 feet back; Hetfield played Hammett the riff right after recording Kill 'Em All, really slowly, like half time, and it sped up over time, Cliff Burton wrote its harmony part, and the crunchy "Die by my hand" breakdown, the band's first big gang-vocal chant in Hetfield's words, comes from a riff Hammett wrote at 16 or 17, which Louder says first appeared in the Exodus song Die By His Hand; Hetfield later described it as a song of open chords carried by the vocals with a real catchy chorus, and the title is a remark Burton made while watching the final plague in The Ten Commandments with Lars Ulrich and Hetfield; first played live on 4 November 1983 at the Country Club in Reseda, it was recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen between 20 February and 14 March 1984, rhythm guitar and drums first, and released on 23 November 1984 as the album's only commercial single, and it is now the band's second-most-played song live. Tones in this style live or die on tight low end and a scooped midrange, with the picking hand doing as much of the work as the amp.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a high-gain head and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Metallica use on Creeping Death?

The Gibson Explorer that James Hetfield told Guitar World in 2009 he had by the time of Ride the Lightning, a shape he says he grew to love better than the V, though Ground Guitar says he played his Electra Flying V copy on the band's first two albums, and quotes him saying it felt like Ride the Lightning when he plugged it in again years later; Guitar.com says he bought a new Marshall JMP 2203 before the album, to replace the modded Marshall stolen in Boston, and drove it a little harder with an old Ibanez Tube Screamer, while Kirk Hammett remembers producer Flemming Rasmussen calling the music stores in Copenhagen to bring down all their Marshalls and the band using a great-sounding head that belonged to a player in another band, dubbed the Best Sounding Marshall in Denmark, for most of the album; for this song Hammett said in the same 2009 interview that he was still using his black Flying V and a Boss distortion pedal through Marshall amps with a TC Electronic EQ, and that Rasmussen suggested double-tracking the solo to make it thicker and fuller, though in a later Guitar World interview he said there has been a Tube Screamer for the solos on Ride the Lightning and every album since; Rasmussen told Tape Op the album went to 24-track tape through his Trident A Range console, with a Shure SM7 and a Neumann U87 close on the center of one speaker cone, most guitars recorded through two cabinets with an AKG The Tube on each at 45 degrees and three to six feet away, and Brüel & Kjær 4006 room mics 10 to 15 feet back; Hetfield played Hammett the riff right after recording Kill 'Em All, really slowly, like half time, and it sped up over time, Cliff Burton wrote its harmony part, and the crunchy "Die by my hand" breakdown, the band's first big gang-vocal chant in Hetfield's words, comes from a riff Hammett wrote at 16 or 17, which Louder says first appeared in the Exodus song Die By His Hand; Hetfield later described it as a song of open chords carried by the vocals with a real catchy chorus, and the title is a remark Burton made while watching the final plague in The Ten Commandments with Lars Ulrich and Hetfield; first played live on 4 November 1983 at the Country Club in Reseda, it was recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen between 20 February and 14 March 1984, rhythm guitar and drums first, and released on 23 November 1984 as the album's only commercial single, and it is now the band's second-most-played song live.

Sources: Guitar World: Hetfield and Hammett on Metallica's key songs (2009), Guitar World: Kirk Hammett talks Ride the Lightning, Guitar.com: Metallica gear facts, Ground Guitar: James Hetfield's Electra Flying V, Tape Op: Flemming Rasmussen, riding the Sweet Silence, Louder: the story behind Ride the Lightning, Wikipedia: Ride the Lightning, Wikipedia: Creeping Death

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.