Originally Posted by: theguywithalifebut the into to the song is a barrage of very fast palm muted alternate picked notes and if i play it up to tempo i screw up big time.

That kind of fast alternate picking requires you develop a relaxed, minimal picking motion. There's no way to get that kind of picking done with the wider normal strumming motions used to play chords for example.

That can be hard to do because it's counter-intuitive to play something fast & dramatic while staying loose, relaxed & using the bare minimal motions required to play the notes!

1. Stay relaxed. Any tension in your picking hand (or arm) is only going to make it harder to go faster. Consciously remind yourself to stay loose & relaxed. The more you do this the quicker it will graudally become second nature.

2. Use minimal motion. Just enough to graze the tip of the pick over the string to sound the note is all that's necessary. Don't dig in too far to the plane of the strings. You'll only get hung up & slow down. Just use the tip of the pick to graze the string & right away come back the other way for the next note.

I cover these techniques in a couple of lessons on building speed. These are aimed at playing licks on the upper strings, but the technique is fully applicable to the lower strings for riffing.

Speedy Ideas 1

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=287

In particular check out lesson 2 on the basic technique.

Speedy Ideas 3

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=929

In particular lesson 3 on applying the technique to notes on 2 adjacent strings.

Those entire tutorials might be beneficial to work through in order to get a good workout with those ideas. But at minimum those 2 lessons will help you with the basic technique.

Hope that helps!