Ok, this is a rip off of Pawans' thread, but yeah, it's a little different. Mine would be AC/DC's Thunderstruck and Highway To Hell Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine Santana's Smooth (Feat. Rob Thomas) Metallica's Nothing Else Matters and Master Of Puppets Iron Maidens' Rainmaker This will seem weird, but blink-182's All The Small Things
Iron Man by Black Sabbath and Scarified by Racer X/Paul Gilbert And others worth mentioning that all happen to be on guitar hero/rock band are: Disturbed - Stricken Tenacious D - The Metal Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds Those are the catchy ones. And Scarified is a technical one. But i could say a billion Explosions In The Sky riffs but there not too catchy.
Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" and "The Number of the Beast" Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," "Paranoid," "War Pigs" and "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" Ozzy Osbourne's "Bark at the Moon" and "Crazy Train" Metallica's "Enter Sandman" and "Master of Puppets" Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Paradise City" Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," "You Give Love a Bad Name," "Livin' on a Prayer," "Keep the Faith" Aerosmith's "Dream On," "Sweet Emotion" and "Walk This Way" White Snake's "Here I Go Again" Dio's "Holy Diver" And to be contemporary: Atreyu's "Right Side of the Bed" Avenged Sevenfold's "Unholy Confessions" and "Chapter Four" Thrice's "The Artist in the Ambulance" and "All That's Left" Yellowcard's "Ocean Avenue" Story of the Year's "Until the Day I Die" Lostprophets' "Last Train Home" Bullet for My Valentine's "Suffocating Under Words of Sorrow" Coheed and Cambria's "Welcome Home" I find that most contemporary artists don't have riffs nearly as catchy as the riffs of bands from the '70s and '80s.
Alexisonfire - Pulmonary Archery As I Lay Dying - 94 Hours/ The Darkest Nights Avenged Sevenfold - Unholy Confessions Coheed & Cambria - A Favour House Atlantic/ Welcome Home In Flames - December Flower/ Trigger Scary Kids Scaring Kids - The Only Medicine
Sepultura - "Arise" and "Roots Bloody Roots" Metallica - "One" Deftones - "My Own Summer (Shove It)" The Smashing Pumpkins - "Zero" Killswitch Engage - "Fixation on the Darkness" Plus the dozens of classic rock and metal riffs that I've forgotten. This list could go on for days.
Killswitch Engage - The End Of Heartache Killswitch Engage - My Curse Saosin - Voices Saosin - Let Go Control Blink 182 - Whats' My Age Again? Just a few great ones for me.
AILD - The Darkest Nights, Forsaken (post-chorus riff) Killswitch Engage - Holy Diver (cover) Trivium - Pull Harder, Dying in your arms Unearth - So it goes Also definitely worth mentioning, a band I've posted a few times about. Their name is Aberrance, and I'm not even sure if they are even around anymore, their myspace hasn't been updated in awhile. But they made one of the most perfect songs ever called "Karma Kills". I suggest you check it out at their myspace and listen to it, I especially love the riff: http://www.myspace.com/aberrance
Avenged Sevenfold - Unholy Confessions As I Lay Dying - Through Struggle (the intro riff) Metallica - Master of Puppets Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction, In My Darkest Hour, Trust, Hangar 18 My Chemical Romance - Thank You For The Venom Pantera - Cowboys From Hell Rage Against The Machine - Killing in the Name Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train The Haunted - All Against All I'm thinking Megadeth and Dave Mustaine may possibly be good at this kind of thing.