Summarize:

. Palm-muting is essential to djent and most metal riffs. Learning to do alternate picking while muting all the strings on the guitar, or at least the strings you're playing, with the edge of your hand helps you to control the sound and make the percussive chug of the djent riff more prominent. Take your picking hand and rest the space between your pinkie and your wrist on the strings, in between the bridge and neck pick-ups. Do an alternate-picking pattern on the lowest string on your guitar. You're close to djent now. Polyrhythms are a common feature of djent, and most progressive or "math" metal. What this means, essentially, is that the riff is played at a distinctly different rhythm from the rest of the music, or the beat as its played. This can be played relative to the verses and choruses, or relative to the drums in the riff itself. If the concept of polyrhythms seems overly complicated, think of it as playing "off-time" riffs instead, as if you and the drummer were playing slightly different songs, but at the same tempo, but working together to create one effect. Say the word "djent" five times, fast. That's what you want your riffs to sound like. Think of like you're using your lowest guitar string like a snare drum to play a rhythmic and melodic "fill" that everyone can headbang to. The heavier and the more rhythmic, the better. Most djent riffs feature no more than one or two notes, so it doesn't need to be overly complicated. Most djent riffs are on the lowest string of the guitar, unfretted. One of the cornerstones of mathcore is abrupt transitions between the different sections of the song. Djent riff breakdowns typically slow down the tempo somewhat, relative to the verses and choruses. It's typical to start a djent song with the breakdown riff, then speed up to sing the verse, then shift to the chorus, then back to the Sweeping arpeggiated solos Poppy choruses Frequent djent breakdowns and blast beats Abrupt tempo transitions
Learn to palm-mute Write polyrhythmic riffs on a single note. Make it chug. Make breakdown riffs a feature of the music.