Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country - Guitar Tab

About Bat Country

Few songs in Heavy Metal demand as much from a guitarist right out of the gate as "Bat Country." The intro riff alone, built on Drop D tuning, lets Synyster Gates exploit the low open D string for those chugging palm-muted hits while simultaneously setting up the aggressive melodic runs that define the track. At 173 BPM in E minor, the song sits at a tempo that exposes any sloppiness in your picking hand, so clean alternate picking discipline is essential before you try to get it up to speed. The real challenge comes with the lead guitar work: Synyster's solos blend sweep picking arpeggios with rapid legato passages, and the transitions between them are where most players stumble. Use the Practice Toolbar to isolate those solo sections and loop them slowed down until the hand positions feel natural. Avenged Sevenfold wrote this song during a period when they were pushing their guitar vocabulary hard, and that ambition shows in how much technique is packed into under five minutes.

• The song is in Drop D tuning, which gives the low string riffs extra weight and allows one-finger power chord shapes on the bottom two strings.
• At 173 BPM, the picking hand endurance required for the palm-muted verses is significant, so building up speed gradually with a metronome is the practical approach.
• The solos combine sweep-picked arpeggios with legato runs, making them some of the more technically demanding passages in mainstream heavy metal guitar of the era.