Reddit reviews Extreme Metal Bass: Essential Techniques, Concepts, and Applications for Metal Bassists

ChuckEye's right, you really should be thinking more about chord tones. Practicing scales in a non-musical way makes your solos sound like you're playing scales.

But that said, when thinking about metal: 1) locrian 2) harmonic minor or maybe even the 3) altered (superlocrian) scale. Throw in a dash of 4) whole-tone scale, and some 5) symmetrical diminished scale too. 6) Lydian Dominant sounds weird too.

(You really should learn how most scales are just modes of the Major and Jazz Melodic Minor scales, but if you just want weird sounding stuff try those above to start.)

The real trick is HOW you practice them. You shouldn't be thinking of them as boxes in one position, you should practice them across your fretboard, from lowest note to highest note.

Check out Alex Webster's Extreme Metal Bass book too.

• Stamina, stamina, stamina. If you're bored or need something to do while dinner is heating up, grab your bass and just do 8^th or 16^th note runs. I've never used a grip or finger strengthener, but I've heard good things about them.
  
  
• Stretches. Do lots of left hand stretching exercises. This will be really valuable as you continue. This is a brick wall that I've been hitting lately.
  
  
• Learn blues and jazz. They really help.
  
  
• Invest in a nice fuzz pedal, compressor pedal, and a wah pedal. As you get further in, you'll be able to use these to really shape your tone. Also, playing Cliff-era Metallica or Black Sabbath/Heaven and Hell songs is much more fun when you have distortion.
  
  
• Don't overplay. As soon as it starts to really burn, stop. If you over-exert yourself, you're just fucking yourself over. Callouses are fine (and are a badge of honor, IMO), but if you start bleeding or really ripping up your fingers, set down the bass.
  
  
• TalkBass is a wonderful community. They are very willing to help you with songs and just shoot the shit about bass. There's a strong metal community on there.
  
  
• You should think about getting Alex Webster (of Cannibal Corpse and Blotted Science)'s instructional book. It's been a big help for me, especially on working on my stretches and three finger technique. (I'm not an affiliate, so no monetary gain from that link for me)
  
  
• Have fun. Seriously, just enjoy it. That's the most important thing, isn't it? :)

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but Alex Webster's book, "Extreme Metal Bass", has helped me more than you could imagine. It's not really metal stuff (even though the scales and intervals are common in extreme metal), but the exercises in the book are absolutely amazing at building speed and precision. Not even exagerating, but in only two months of practicing just tje first few exercises, I am able to play songs that I thought I would not ever be able to play.

It goes over fingering patterns, crazy scales, stretching exercises, tapping exercises, string skipping, and many combinations of those. If you don't mind the fact that it is a an metal-based book, I would absolutely recommend this book. 15$ on amazon and extremely high quality, and comes with an access code to hear the exercises online.

edit: link

https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Metal-Bass-Techniques-Applications/dp/1423497155

This one is pretty good if you want to work on your metal chops:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Alex-Webster-Extreme-Metal-Bass/1423497155/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502821320&sr=8-1&keywords=extreme+metal+bass

If you want to work on some actual songs from different artists/bands, the "bass recorded versions"-series from Hal Leonard is pretty nice:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bass+recorded+versions

Webster's book is kinda awesome.

Other than that, just take it as slow as you absolutely need to with a metronome and slowly up the speed over time. No magic to it, just work.

As an addition to all the tips, I highly recommend picking up Alex Webster's Extreme Metal Bass. Helped me a lot in developing my 3 finger playing technique, and a must read for all extreme metal bass players.

That would be Extreme Metal Bass.

I haven't read it myself, but I'd heard a lot of very good things about it if you're playing within the style.

It's hard to give recommendations unless we know what you're capable of.

You could pick up Alex Webster's book as a nice place to start.

Alex Webster also has a book that well worth reading http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Metal-Bass-Book-CD/dp/1423497155

wtf is all that shit, try this book if you want a challenge http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Metal-Bass-Book-CD/dp/1423497155