Did Arch Enemy rip off Ozzy/Jake E. Lee?

[GuitarIv]

Cheers guys,

whilst listening to Bark at the Moon yesterday I noticed something weird. Being a big fan of Arch Enemy's Burning Bridges Album I certainly have all the riffs memorized in my head and I couldn't help myself but think that I had heard a part of "Bark at the Moon" on Burning Bridges before. So I listened through it once again and found it:

1:18:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfso3CiHwN8

And the beginning of Seed of Hate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa7oaNK9WO0

Opinions?  :lol:

[Dmoney]

My opinion?

There are only so many notes and rhthyms to go around. Don't sweat it. Just keep rockin'!

[Cam_H]

To me that sounds very much like Bark at the Moon. Even the fast picking bit sounds eeriely similar. I definitely think they know it's extremely similar to Bark at the Moon.

Funny thing is DMoney has a good point. But I bet if it was a rip off of Crazy Train, everyone would loose their freakin' minds lol.

But yeah: Keep on rocking :)

[Dmoney]

I once wrote a tune and went and gigged it. People seemed to like it.
Then we took a friend on tour who played in another band that had existed before ours at the time, and he suddenly realised he wrote this riff that was in one of our songs as a main hook. We put his bands LP on and found the riff. It was pretty much exactly the same. In all honesty, I never really listened to his band on record but I'd watch them live. I can only remember a few of their tunes and only really started paying attention to them after I'd written my jam. So there you go. Coincidence at best. Funny when the two guys involved can talk about it face to face, but we just thought it was funny and made fun at each other about it. I've heard loads of other bands riffs in other bands records, but unless is REALLY obvious I don't think it's that questionable.

[GuitarIv]

I actually didn't mean to say anything bad or mock any of the two bands, I love Arch Enemy as much as I love Ozzy. I just find it funny that such a great riff found it's way on both albums, sometimes coincidences are quite humorous. ^^

But yeah, there seems to be a limited amount of times you can use a certain melody and/or rhythm without repeating something someone else did somewhere at a certain moment before you  :P

[Dmoney]

its interesting though, because you grow up listening to certain things and then when you play you have no idea how much of subliminal influence something has. To get stuck in constantly evaluating what you've done to make sure it isn't too similar to something else out of some paranoid worry that you don't want people to think you're copying something just takes a lot of fun out of playing. I think I have a problem dealing with this. I don't find writing relaxing as much as I did because I worry about dumb stuff.

I recently posted up that Bonamassa tune Blue & Evil and someone posted Broken by Pantera. Both intros are descending pentatonics with very similar rhythm. I doubt JB went out of his way to copy Pantera, so when you hear similarities then the type of artist adds a context too.

Maybe in a world where music is so easy to get hold of and therefore more dissposable it's also more likely to stumble into tunes with similar sounding parts as the volume of music we come across increase.

In fact, It's happened twice where I've been told a riff i'd written was a copy of something and it hasn't been true. Though one riff never made it to being used in a band. Maybe I'm just very unoriginal! ha

[Cam_H]

I think the biggest culprit of influences rubbing off is when writing balads. There's something about the Canon chord progression, or at least a variation, that seems to sound great when going for them searing heartfelt vocal-lines and solos. I've heard countless bands use it, but all to a different degree to make it sound unique. But essentially everyone has nicked it of Pachabell. But again, chord progressions are one thing. Actual structured riffs are a bit harder to mimick, but it still crops up in peoples playing. Blues licks especially

[JDC]

Every riff you ever wrote has probably already been played by some body else at some point in time

I came up with an awesome riff yesterday... then kept thinking I'm sure I've heard it somewhere before... kept playing it anyway

[Nadz1lla]

Happened all the time to me as a kid, I wrote a song and then realised six months later that Green Day had already recorded almost exactly the same collection of riffs on Dookie. I'd never heard them before that, so I could legitimately claim ignorance, but that didn't stop my mates from taking the mick.  :lol:

[FELINEGUITARS]

I think it was probably knowingly done - I can't imagine the guys in Arch Enemy not being completely familiar with Ozzy's entire catalog, but you can stumble upon things it's true.
Kind of also reminded me of a Vicious Rumours track

[Philly Q]

I'd never heard "Seed of Hate" before, but "Bark at the Moon" is one of my favourite Ozzy tracks, I've listened to it hundreds of times.... and yes, that is a bit too close for comfort!  If I'd heard the Arch Enemy track without prior warning I'd have gone "whaaaat?!"

They must have realised, which makes me wonder if it's a deliberate "tribute" - but they run the risk of being sued, so why do it?

[Dave Sloven]

Yeah, it definitely sounds like a rip off.  Hard to imagine that Amott didn't know that song

[gwEm]

Sounds like a tribute to me.

[Alex]

Sounds like a tribute to me.

Probably a metatextual (metamusical?) reference, something a bit like a 'hidden tribute'. They probably though, "heck, sounds cool, points a bit to Bark of the Moon, let's just go with it".

It's also possible that the similarity didn't really become so apparent until after mixing, i.e. was a bit more obscured before that.

[JimmyMoorby]

Yeah they definitely pinched that.  If Arch Enemy didnt drop tune their guitars I bet other 'stolen' riffs would be much more obvious to spot but thats there style for me traditional metal just drop tuned with death metal vocals and heavy fast drumming.