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ANATOMY OF A THRASH METAL SOLO 🤘

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In this first article of 2025 we dive deeply into the almost perfect 1994 thrash metal guitar solo from the song "I'm Broken" by American groove metal pioneers Pantera.

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In this first article of 2025 we dive deeply into the almost perfect 1994 thrash metal guitar solo from the song "I'm Broken" by American groove metal pioneers Pantera. We are going to break it down and see the explosive brilliance of guitarist Dimebag Darrell Lance Abbott, born in 1966 and one of the greatest guitarists I have ever listened to. He wowed millions in Pantera and Damageplan before his life was tragically cut short on December 8, 2004. He was know more for his riffs and rhythms than his solos and that makes this review all the sweeter with me being an opiniated guitarist who can't play a solo for the bejeezez.

Dimebag Darrell, who gets mega props for lifting his stage name from the very New York 70s rock infused tune "Black Diamond" by KISS (opening Paul Staneley sung song on side 2 of KISS Alive! I think), is seen here playing to a sold out stadium with what is likely a custom "Dime 333" Washburn 6-string

ANATOMY OF A THRASH METAL GUITAR SOLO

Part 1: Song and riff basics

The song starts with, and resolves back to an aggressive riff in the ubiquitous old hard rock and metal staple scale the minor pentatonic. Yes of cousrse it is in E major (see nearly every hard rock song ever for E minor pentatonic). Now if you have your axe handy and you are going to work it out by ear, and I cannot recommend enough that guitarists do this before cheating and looking at the tab, then it is worth noting that E minor for this song is in fact C# minor. Darrell generally played in standard tuning with all six strings dropped down a tone and a half.

Side note: dropping tunings down like this, as well as performing aggressive string bends and whammy bar bends is what led to the creation of "metal" guitars in the 80s: companies like Washburn, ESP, Jackson and Ibanez built string locking systems to keep already wobbly down-tuned strings in tune and now every shredder guitar has them.

Have a quick listen to the opening riff of the song: here

All right so we are in E minor, standard 4/4 timing and the riff is massive and the pentatonic scale is going to carry through to the solo we are dissecting. The main riff is basically E E D on the 5th string and then B G E on the 6th string. To get the sound right for thrash metal fire up a solid state amp with the drive all the way up, the mids scoped (turned way down) and the treble boosted till your ears bleed. Another way to get this sound is to use any old amp with a Boss MT-2 "Metal" pedal. Oh and you'll likely benefit from a noise gate pedal because in thrash we aim for high end buzz and never ending sustain so that if you hold a note it retains it's volume level for ages and/or exponentially heads toward feedback. OK lets head to the solo now.

Part 2: Start of the solo

OK so the solo starts at 2m 30s and let us focus on the first 4 bars where he mainly plays up near the bridge, listen from 2m30s to 2m43s. You could say the wha pedal part leading up to the solo is the start of the solo but I prefer to think of that as a band section, not a solo, as all the players are busy and as loud as each other. If you click the link below it starts at 2m 28s so a couple of seconds before the solo begins:

https://youtu.be/2-V8kYT1pvE?si=DaeIcB69yctIZS4N

Now firstly I love the way Vinnie Paul (Dimebag's brother) on drums and bassist Rex Brown do a typical Pantera-patented groove metal trick here: pull back the last bar before the solo with syncopated funk style ba-bup ba-bup - ba-bup ba-bup and that actually starts the solo one beat before the start of the next bar - so we drop a beat here - and it gives the solo a jolt to the listeners ear and that gets the listener zoned in on the solo right from the start. This trick is very standard in funk rock music and George Clinton did it a lot with his amazing guitarist Eddie 'Maggot Brain solo' Hazel. Little attention to detail like this and the similar bit at the end of the solo differentiate pro Metal bands from your average weekend metal bands.

This four bar section has Vinnie playing a very repetitive and very slow double-kick beat (to create space for the solo and chorus bass line). The rhythm section here is tight as a rusted vintage cars head gasket (the fact they sound machine perfect in 1994 a few years before engineers started manually using Pro Tools edits to make bands sound perfect is another thing of note here). The thing that separates Vinnie here is how hard he hits, you can see it watching him play live and he has influenced millions of young little whiper snapper heavy metal and punk drummers for reals.

Darrell here plays blindingly fast on the aforementioned pentatonic minor scale with lots of letting the high E string ring out and the minor 7ths (D) and perfect 4ths and 5ths (bending A notes a full tone up to B). His notes are super clean and perfect timing in contrast with that high octane rock n roll style, I love this opening part of the solo:

  • Bar 1: it starts very bluesy and Hendrix like with notes bended and screaming.
  • Bar 2: Suddenly switches to drunken robot at a circus like pinging back and fourth of augmented 4th and perfect 5th intervals (very Satriani/Vai/EVH 80s and prog metal vibes).
  • Bar 3 & 4: It is a classic shredding metal solo for the last 2 bars of this section, very Hammett like, stays mostly in the pentatonic minor scale while adding the augmented 4th that was introduced on bar 2. If you listen really closely to the start of this section you can hear minuscule errors in timing on 1 maybe 2 notes and I love this because it means not too much Pro Tools corrections (or wait it was 1994 so none). You get raw energy of the original tracking. Playing that fast is crazy hard btw.

Part 3: The solo erupts

Pun intended there as Dimebag was heavily influenced by Eddie Van Halen's Eruption solo and uses many of his childhood hero's techniques in Pantera and throughout this second 4 bars of the solo. Let's pickup the solo 2m 43s just befor bar 5:

https://youtu.be/2-V8kYT1pvE?si=DaeIcB69yctIZS4N

During this section Dimebag Darrell initially drops back to the low sounds and solos on the lower strings and then he essentially reverses the solo by heading back up the neck and with the fast arpeggios, then the drunken robot circus vibe and then the bluesy bends on the minor 7th up to the octave... brilliant! It is always refreshing to see guitarists use the lower strings in a solo - think the solo in Paul Kelly's To Her Door oh shit yeah that's a great solo.

Darrell uses the classic metal sounding ascending scales here with a very high degree of difficulty. Not my kind of solo style-wise and I have always personally preferred Toni Iommi's mind-bending layered solos a lot more than Metallica-like classical scale metal solos, and you just have to appreciate the clarity, tone and skill on display here, that many notes plucked clearly at that pace is incredibly difficult.

The solo layers over 8 bars (the so-called middle 8 of the song that is, at 2m of a 4m song, right in the middle) and ends with nearly 2 extra bars of syncopated rhythms with the drums and bass held back a bit and the return of the groovy ba-bup ba-bup - ba-bup ba-bup - pretty sure we drop a beat going back into the chorus. At any rate bars 7 and 8 here are ridiculously exiting as DD builds the tension and the drums and bass begin their riffs and rolls to end the last bar and crash back into the main riff, but wait for it.. no not yet..

https://youtu.be/2-V8kYT1pvE?si=DaeIcB69yctIZS4N

OK they take another 1 and 3/4 bars to hold the outro of the solo in stasis while DD keeps building up over the last bar and through this extended section with arpeggios and then the final, epic, staccato arpeggio that climbs up to the solo ending high note a la BB King on steroids and.. wooo hoo man.. that final high note is perfect and right on the edge of feedback and he hits it perfectly and holds it screaming as the drums, bass and the now magically appearing duplicate of Dimebag (hey they were doing an album) and finally they all smash back into the riff and Anselmo roars us back into the chorus line "I'm Broken!". We here at Guiltfilter Records recommend to turn that bit up really, really loud and, yessss, do some air guitar!

RIP Pantera's legendary guitarist and songwriter Dimebag Darrell 🤘