yo these last few days ive been writing a 'dreamy' bassline which is to be played beneath a separate guitar part.

It was all going fine, until yesterday morning i hit a point where whatever i tried it just didnt sound good. This caused me to use a lot of root, 5th and 8th chords, which sound ok at the time but wont sound much good at all in a metal song. Any suggestions would be nicely accepted.

Ill try to record the so far of it

What are the chords?

Um, a root can sound perfectly fine in a "dreamy" bassline if the right tone is attatched to it. Vibratos do wonders, pluck the string near the 12th fret or so, vibrato that sucker, and you can get a "dreamy" tone, though I'm not sure what dreamy is.

You might want to look into using extended stuff as well, I'd go with 10ths though, they have a very tripped out sound if applied right.

Try switching those 5ths and 8ths for flat fifths and flat sevens. Lots of vibrato/bends achieves an airy, dreamy type of sound.