There are two kinds of guitarists: those who admit they've paused an Opeth song to figure out "wait, what on earth is happening on the fretboard right now," and liars. "Master's Apprentices" from Deliverance is peak Opeth — one minute Mikael Åkerfeldt is growling like a haunted furnace, the next he's playing something so pretty you want to light a candle and cry into your denim jacket.
This little clip grabs one nice riff from the song and hands it to you on a plate — no 10-minute runtime, no death-growl vocal audition required. Just twenty-three seconds of chunky, standard-tuned prog death metal to sink your fingers into.
How this Opeth riff actually works
The magic here isn't blistering speed — it's weight. Opeth riffs breathe, so the groove lives entirely in your right hand. Anchor the side of your palm right where the strings meet the bridge saddles and let the low notes chug with palm mutes, then lift the muting off for the notes that ring out. That contrast between choked and open is the whole personality of the riff — get it wrong and it turns to mush, get it right and it sounds like a thundercloud with opinions.
For the picking hand, aggressive downstrokes give you that tight, uniform attack Åkerfeldt loves, while the darker colour comes from staying inside a minor tonality — if you want to know why it sounds so gothic and doomy, that's the minor key doing its brooding work. Practical takeaway: nail the palm-mute placement first at half speed, and the "heaviness" appears on its own. No extra gain pedal required.
If you feel your pinky filing a formal complaint, don't worry — that's just prog metal charging you the standard emotional toll. PDF and Guitar Pro file are on my Patreon, where the notes stay perfectly in tune and nobody growls at you.