The song is driven by a riff that resembles the sound of a bass guitar. To create this sound, White connected a semi-acoustic guitar to a DigiTech Whammy pedal (a pitch shift effect), lowering the pitch by an octave. The riff uses five pitches and consists of seven notes; it begins with a held note followed by four syncopated notes, ending with two notes that appear frequently in laments. The 7-note riff of "Seven Nation Army" has been noted to be similar to a passage in the first movement of Bruckner's 5th symphony. The song also features distorted vocals and a "heartbeat drum", played by White Stripes drummer Meg White. AllMusic's Tom Maginnis noted that the song "manipulat the power of tension and release": it creates a sense of "anticipatory energy", then transitions into what Maginnis described as a crush of what stands for the chorus", consisting of an electric guitar and a "bashing crash cymbal".