12 Greatest Hard Rock Riffs Of The 1990s

One of the biggest revelations to come out of the '90s was the invention of drop D. While other acts like Led Zeppelin and even the Beatles had flirted with tuning the guitar in a different way, the act of dropping the lower strings down even lower opened up a whole different Pandora's Box for guitar players. There were plenty of bands utilizing the technique, but the first true champion came with "Killing In the Name."

Written while demonstrating the technique to a fellow guitar player, Tom Morello immediately stopped his lesson after coming up with the riff so he could demo it for Rage Against the Machine. For as much as Zack de la Rocha's screams and social commentary permeate "Killing In the Name," the song really belongs to Morello's guitar, which hits you with the blunt force of a sledgehammer. While the bass might set an uneasy pulse in the beginning, the song doesn't really get underway until the riff starts, with everyone locked in on the same groove.

As the song plods along, the amount of force becomes even heavier in the breakdown, leading Morello to switch it up and practically reinvent the riff from the ground up as Zack screams about how he "won't do what you tell me." In just a few minutes, "Killing in the Name" became the lynchpin for guitarists to forget everything they thought they knew about heaviness.