Salem (band)
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Salem is an Israeli Doom/Death metal band, pioneers of the Oriental metal movement.
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Overview (and themes)
Salem was the pioneer of combining metal with Jewish issues, and after a typical Death metal album in 1992, Salem produced the first Oriental metal album in 1994.
It is called Kaddish (literally "holiness", a Jewish prayer asking God to come to earth and usually associated with death and funerals) which deals with the Holocaust and the massacre of six millions Jews by Nazi Germany. The most powerful song on the album is the metal revision of Ha'ayara Bo'eret - a song in Hebrew that was composed by a Holocaust survivor and depicts the burning of a Jewish town in Europe. The song was adapted to a slow Doom metal version, but sung in Hebrew.
In 2002 Salem produced the album Collective Demise dealing with the atrocities of Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis. In this album Salem wrote a metal adaptation to the Biblical Psalms chant Al Taster. The song opened with Shofar blowing and the chant was sung by duet of clean female vocals and distorted male vocals.
Music
Salem music is a combination of doomdeath (slow-paced death metal) with Oriental elements and black metal singing voice (distorted hoarse screams). Riffing, hencforth, can range from slow and heavy doom metal riffing to very fast and rapid black metal riffing.
In some songs, Salem combines tender oriental and Jewish melodies (such as the intro of Ha'ayar Bo'eret). In their last album, Collective Demise, Salem also combined soft female vocals - a contrast to the hard raging male "death vocals".
Discography
- Creating Our Sins (1992) Morbid
- Kaddish (1994)
- A Moment Of Silence (1998) BNE
- Collective Demise (2002) System Shock
- Strings attached (2005)
Band members
- Ze'ev Tananboim - vocals
- Lior Mizrachi - guitars
- Nir Gutraiman - guitars
- Michael Goldstein - bass
- Nir Nakav - drums
External links
- Salem offical hompage (http://www.salemband.com)
- Salem (BNR pages) (http://www.bnrmetal.com/groups/sale.htm)he:סאלם