If you have a guitar and you’re willing to tune it down to B, you’ll want to check out a set of At The Gates guitar tabs available from the At The Gates website. There are 14 songs available in all, including most of the band’s classics from 1995’s “Slaughter of the Soul.”

The tabs have all been personally corrected by guitarist Anders Björler. There are definitely some high-quality tabs out there done by obsessive fans, but if you ask me, there’s no substitute for official tabulature done by the band members.

From MetalKult.com: GuitarWorld’s tab site now features several official tabs from well-known extreme metal acts.  The tabs featured include Burzum’s ‘Det Som En Gang Var,’ Immortal’s ‘Sons Of Northern Darkness,’ Mayhem’s ‘Deathcrush,’ and three songs by Death.  Head to tabs.guitarworld.com to view the tabs.

Decrepit Birth’s newest album “Diminishing Between Worlds” was a whirlwind of progressive death metal technicality. Hell, these guys play Cynic riffs while warming up for shows. So how can you pass up guitar or drum lessons from Decrepit Birth drummer and Odious Mortem drummer/guitarist K.C. Howard?

Howard teaches out of Santa Cruz, CA, and besides being a sick technical death metal drummer, he has pretty impressive credentials - he’s been teaching music professionally for over 6 years, has a music degree from San Jose State, and charges a pretty reasonable price for lessons. You can contact him through the Community Music School of Santa Cruz.

Swedish tech-metal band Meshuggah and death metal legends Deicide have recently decided to put modern technology to good use in promoting their new albums.  Meshuggah drummer Tomas Haake has announced a video drum competition, while Deicide is putting the creative burden of music video direction into the hands of their most talented fans with a music video competition.

The Meshuggah contest lets aspiring drummers record themselves drumming along to the track ‘Bleed‘ from the "obZen" album, which was released earlier this year.  Haake has stated that ‘Bleed’ is by far the most complex on the album, and even he had to spent a good deal of time practicing it, so fans should have their hands full replicating the performance.  Promising entries will be uploaded Meshuggah’s MySpace blog, which also contains some very intimidating drum tabs for the song.  The winner will be announced April 6th, with prizes including a signed copy of the album, a huge signed poster, and a congratulatory phone call from Haake himself.

Deicide, meanwhile, have announced an intriguing competition to create the best music video for the track ‘In The Eyes Of God’ off their upcoming release "Till Death Do Us Part."  Awhile ago I posted about the unfortunate lack of creativity among many metal videos, so I’m quite eager to see what the metal community comes up with.  Visit the competition page to download an mp3 of the song, video clips, logos, lyrics, and anything else to get the creative spark going.  The winning video director will receive an Ibanez bass signed by the band, bragging rights, and presumably the chance to create more metal videos in the future.   

While there are several options for extreme metal guitarists and bassists, and vocalists don’t need much more than some vocal talent and a lyric sheet, drummers seem to get the short end of the stick.  You don’t see too many drum transcription books for extreme metal bands, and it can’t be easy to figure that stuff out on your own.

Here’s the next best thing - some of metal’s most talented drummers have authored drum technique books and DVDs, so at least aspiring drummers out there can get the chops they need to play like the pros.  

• Derek Roddy’s book, The Evolution of Blast Beats illustrates many of the technical beats utilized in extreme metal, also offering excercises and a play-along CD.

• Slayer’s Dave Lombardo’s book Power Grooves also has useful instructional material for extreme drummers, and offers a CD containing play-along tracks from Dave’s work with Grip Inc.

• Current Ephel Duath drummer Marco Minneman has a book called Maximum Minneman, which details his practice routine. 

• Minneman has also released a DVD titled "Extreme Drumming," which contains footage of him performing and explanations of his techniques, and should be an excellent resource for intermediate or advanced drummers.

• Last but not least, Cryptopsy’s Flo Mounier’s 2DVD set, "Extreme Metal Drumming 101" should be mandatory viewing for extreme metal drummers.

Every time I think I’ve covered all the good extreme metal tab books out there, I discover more. This time it’s two songbooks for progressive metalcore act Between The Buried And Me. It’s hard to tell from the product information, but these sound fairly official, not just some random guy’s attempt at transcribing the band’s songs. There is a book of guitar transcriptions for the “Colors” album, and a bass book for “Alaska.” I’m not sure why they didn’t just do full guitar/bass for both albums, but hey, it’s better than nothing.

Since the extreme metal genre seems to hold a special appeal for musicians, it would stand to reason that there should be no scarcity of resources for extreme metal musicians, right? I’ve already posted about the upcoming musician-oriented Execution Magazine, as well as the excellent Scattered Ashes tablature book by Emperor. Sites like MetalTabs.com (before it was targeted by the NMPA), SickDrummer.com and others are also amazing resources.

But what about guitar tablature books? Aside from the Emperor book, there don’t seem to be very many of these that cater to extreme metal, and those that do seem to be of varying quality. Here are a few others that have been published:

• Mastodon - Leviathan Tabs/Sheet Music Book
• Mastodon - Blood Mountain Tabs/Sheet Music Book
• The Best Of Opeth (Guitar Recorded Versions) Book
• Lamb of God - Sacrament Tabs/Sheet Music Book
• Lamb of God - Ashes of the Wake Tabs/Sheet Music Book
• Shadows Fall - Threads of Life Tabs/Sheet Music Book

The common thread seems to be that the books were produced with little or no input from the bands, and thus the quality suffers. Nevertheless, the speed and complexity of metal often makes it very difficult to transcribe by ear, so having a book with tabs that are not quite 100% correct can still be quite helpful.

Because of the underground nature of extreme metal, you’re probably not going to be seeing many tab books for your favorite bands from companies like Hal Leonard. Fortunately, some bands have elected to release official guitar tabs to the public themselves. For example, the At The Gates website has a zip file containing tabs of all their songs that is free to download.

Most people have probably already heard about this, but it’s still cool enough to be worth a mention: To accompany the release of their best-of compilation, "Scattered Ashes - A Decade of Emperial Wrath," Emperor also released a tablature book of the same name.  The book contains complete guitar and bass tabs for all 13 songs on the first disc of the album, transcribed by Ihsahn himself.  As a bonus, the book also includes the first "Scattered Ashes" disc so that you can play along with the songs.  The song selection include many of Emperor’s most popular tracks, spanning the band’s entire career:

1. Curse All You Men!
2. The Tongue of Fire
3. The Majesty Of The Nightsky
4. Cosmic Keys To My Creations And Times
5. Wrath Of The Tyrant
6. The Loss And Curse Of Reverence
7. An Eley Of Icaros
8. I Am The Black Wizards
9. Thus Spake The Nightspirit
10. Ye Entrancemperium
11. In The Wordless Chamber
12. With Strength I Burn
13. Inno A Satana

The easiest place to get is probably either Amazon, if it’s in stock, or Candlelight Records, but you can also grab it from Seattle’s Kreation Records.  Emperor is one of the most innovative and talented bands in metal from a musical composition standpoint, so this book should be an invaluable tool to aspiring metal guitarists everywhere.  Highly recommended.

If you’ve ever been curious as to how some extreme metal vocalists achieve their vocal sounds, the Internet has the answer.  WikiHow has a very informative page on How to Do Harsh Death Metal Vocals, which contains a bit of commentary by George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher from Cannibal Corpse.  The San Francisco Bay Guardian also has an interesting article on this topic called "Voices From Hell." 

Aside from covering the basics of how to consistently perform guttural vocals without destroying your throat, the articles also mention some interesting information about the different strategies used by vocalists in the industry, such as inhaled vs. exhaled vocals, varying the pitch of your growl, and keeping saliva in the throat to modify and enhance your sound.

Execution Magazine is a new publication geared towards musicians of all levels in the underground extreme music scene. They plan to feature instrument lessons, METAL guitar tabs, recording and studio tips, gear and show reviews, and much more.

Execution Magazine is currently offering free one-year subscriptions to the first 10,000 people who sign up, no strings attached. Just head over to ExecutionMagazine.com and sign up!