Oriental metal
Sung and screamed. Clean singing and harsh vocals trade off, often chorus against verse.
In short
Middle Eastern modes, oud and traditional percussion built into progressive or death metal.
How it sounds
- Middle Eastern modes — hijaz, kurd — used as the basis for riffs.
- Oud, saz, darbuka and other traditional instruments built into the arrangements.
- Vocals alternating between Western technique and Eastern melisma.
Hear what that means
- Quarter tones the guitar cannot play from 6:57
Oud and saz carrying maqam scales containing intervals equal temperament has no access to, with the guitars playing only the notes they can reach.
Open on YouTube at 6:57 - Rhythm from outside rock
Middle Eastern rhythmic cycles under black metal riffing, with darbuka alongside the kit.
Open on YouTube - Orchestrated
Strings doubling the modal melodies where the guitars cannot follow, which is the genre's central arrangement solution.
Open on YouTube
Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. 2 of 3 are cued to a second read from the upload's own tracklist.
The specifics
- Tempo
- 110-170 bpm
- Song length
- 5-9 min
- Tuning
- Standard and D, alongside instruments in maqam — the Arabic modal system, which contains intervals no fretted guitar can play without modification.
- Production
- Layered and wide, with the traditional instruments recorded properly rather than sampled. Reconciling maqam with equal temperament is the production's central problem.
- Written about
- Middle Eastern history and myth, Religious coexistence, Land and exile, Mysticism
What each part is doing
- Oud, saz and bouzouki Fretless or microtonally fretted, playing maqam scales containing quarter tones — intervals that literally do not exist on a guitar.
- Guitar Playing the notes of the mode that equal temperament can reach, and leaving the microtonal movement to the traditional instruments. That division of labour is the genre's core technical solution.
- Percussion Darbuka and frame drums alongside the kit, playing Middle Eastern rhythmic cycles rather than a rock backbeat.
- Vocals Growled, sung and frequently cantillated in the liturgical manner, in Hebrew, Arabic or English by turns.
- Strings Arranged orchestrally on the larger records, doubling the modal melodies where the guitars cannot follow.
What it isn't
That the traditional instruments are colour. They are carrying material the guitars physically cannot play: maqam includes quarter tones, and a fretted guitar in equal temperament has no access to them. The genre's central achievement is an arrangement practice that lets both systems coexist in one song, which is a real musical problem that Western metal had never had to solve.
Told apart from
- Folk metal Folk metal grafts European dance music onto metal. Oriental metal has a harder problem — a modal system with intervals the guitar cannot produce.
- Symphonic metal Both are arrangement-led with orchestral scale. Oriental metal's melodic material comes from outside Western harmony entirely.
- Progressive metal The long forms and compositional ambition are shared, and several of these bands are as much progressive as folk.
- Celtic metal The same project with a different tradition, and a much easier technical problem — Irish modes fit the guitar.
The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.
History
Orphaned Land, from Israel, have sung since 1991 about coexistence between the region's religions and have a large audience in Arab countries where they cannot perform. Melechesh left Jerusalem for the Netherlands with a style built on Mesopotamian mythology. Myrath, from Tunisia, took the formula toward melodic progressive metal.
Descended from
Siblings on this branch
Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree
- Hard rock 1.0 apart by rating · no shared ancestor
- Neue Deutsche Härte 1.0 apart by rating · meets it at Heavy metal
- Black 'n' roll 1.0 apart by rating · meets it at Heavy metal
Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.