Metallica - Dual Lead Guitars Fight Fire With Fire - Guitar Tab

About Dual Lead Guitars Fight Fire With Fire

At 250 BPM in E minor, "Fight Fire With Fire" is one of the most demanding pieces in the Thrash Metal catalogue, and the dual lead guitar work is exactly where most players hit a wall. The song opens with a deceptively gentle acoustic passage before exploding into relentless palm-muted galloping riffs that require tight right-hand control and serious picking endurance. When the twin guitar leads arrive, both voices move at speed and need to lock together precisely, which means any sloppiness in synchronisation becomes immediately obvious. Getting the palm muting consistent across that tempo is the real challenge: too little pressure and the chug turns into a blur, too much and you lose the attack. Practise the galloping rhythm sections in short segments using the Practice Toolbar, looping them slowed down until your picking hand can repeat them cleanly before pushing the tempo back up. Metallica built the arrangement so that neither guitar part works in isolation, so learning both lines gives you a much better feel for how they fit.

• The song sits at 250 BPM in E Standard tuning, making consistent alternate picking and palm muting across the galloping riff sections a serious endurance test.
• The twin lead guitar lines move in harmony at high speed, requiring two players to match phrasing and timing precisely or the parts fall apart quickly.
• The acoustic introduction uses fingerpicking in a classical style, so switching cleanly to aggressive heavy rhythm playing is itself a useful technique exercise.