Volbeat Style

Hi GMC!

Welcome to my new rocker lesson covering the unique style of Volbeat, a Danish Metal band formed in Copenhagen in 2001. The band consists of Michael Poulson (Vocals & Guitars), Anders Kjølholm, Rob Caggiano (Guitar) and Jon Larsen (Drums).

Music Style:
Their music style is a fusion of rock and roll, heavy metal and rockabilly, inspired by classic artists like Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash as well as modern hard rock, alternative and thrash metal bands. I can notice strong influences by Metallica, mostly their 90’s sound, and also Social Distortion. This fusion is interesting to hear and makes their albums enjoyable from the first to the last track. In this lesson, you will hear these influences in action. You'll hear classic rock, punk, alternative and thrash metal in the same tune mixed as they do it in their songs.

Tonality, Chord Progression & Scales:
Based on their influences you will surely suspect that their progressions and tonalities come from classic rock and heavy metal. It would be interesting to check out my previous lessons covering the style of Classic punk, Thrash Metal, as well as lessons covering the style of Social Distortion, Offspring and Bad Religion to learn more about this type of progressions that are usually a mix of minor keys with blues progressions. This tune is in D major but has some little moments where I modulate to B minor, and also add some borrowed parts from D Phrygian.

Techniques:
This lesson includes rocker strumming, riffing, speed/thrash metal rhythm and also some rocker licks and phrasing. The techniques used in this one are palm muting, strumming, down picking, alternate picking, bending and vibrato. It has a real song shape so it’s a good excuse to practice the transition from one technique to the other smoothly as you should do it in real songs.

Tuning: I used standard 440 tuning.

Tempo: 150 BPM

Sound:
I used LePou plugins to create the guitar tone. These are free amp emulators that are extremely recommend. The head used for this guitar tone is Poulin HyBrit which is a Marshall Emulation. Here you can check the setting that I used:



Click HERE to download the patch used.

Ok guys – let’s start rocking!