Some riffs whisper. Muse's "Psycho" kicks the door in, calls you a maggot, and orders you to drop and give it twenty. It is the least subtle thing Matt Bellamy has ever recorded — and this is a man who once built a guitar out of a touchscreen.
In this 54-second clip I break down the intro and verse riff from Psycho: the snarling, palm-muted chug that dragged a drill-sergeant sample into a stadium singalong. It sits low, it sits dirty, and your right hand is about to do most of the heavy lifting.
How the Psycho riff works
Strip the fuzz away and Psycho is almost embarrassingly simple: it lives in E minor pentatonic (E–G–A–B–D), leans hard on the open low E, and sneaks in the Bb — the flat-5 "blue note" — to make everything sound like it wants to fight you. There are no exotic chords here. The menace comes entirely from rhythm and grime.
The real work is in your picking hand. Rest the edge of your palm lightly on the strings near the bridge and you get that tight, choked chug; lift it a hair on the accents and the riff suddenly breathes. Nail the palm muting and the pentatonic notes take care of themselves — the same trick Bellamy reuses all over Plug In Baby, just with more distortion and fewer feelings.
Play it too politely and it sounds like a lawnmower idling; play it like you mean it and the neighbours assume you've joined a cult. Grab the Guitar Pro file and slowed-down video over on my Patreon — bring your own fuzz pedal.