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Shriek Metal (often confused with Black Metal) is an extreme subgenre of Black Metal, which combine's elements of Death Metal, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal and Black Metal, Common traits include fast tempos, extremely shrieked vocals 10 times more powerful than that of Black Metal vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure. Characteristics Instrumentation Shriek Metal guitarists usually favor high-pitched guitar tones and a great deal of distortion. The guitar is usually played with much use of fast, un-muted tremolo picking. Guitarists often use dissonance—along with specific scales, intervals and chord progressions—to yield foreboding and fear-inducing sounds. The tritone or flat-fifth is often used, for example. Guitar solos and low guitar tunings are common in shriek metal. The bass guitar is seldom used to play stand-alone melodies. It is not uncommon for the bass guitar to be minimal or difficult to hear, or to homophonically follow the bass lines of the guitar. Typically, drumming is fast and uses double-bass and/or blast beats. Shriek metal songs often use shriek vocals all through, and stray away from clean chorus vocals. Vocals and lyrics Traditional or "purist" shriek metal bands usually use high-pitched, screamning which include extreme shrieking. This vocal style was influenced by Gaahl of Gorgoroth, and is one of the traits that distinguishes traditional shriek metal vocals from those of black metal, which usually uses medium pitched screams. shriek metal uses the lyrical themes and imagery from Black metal. Production Low-cost production quality was typical for early shriek metal artists with low budgets, where recordings would often take place in the homes or basements of artists. However, even when they were able to raise their production quality, many artists chose to keep making low fidelity (lo-fi) recordings. The reason for this was to stay true to the genre's underground roots and to make the music sound more "raw" and "cold". One of the better-known examples of this is the album Transilvanian Hunger by Darkthrone - a band that has been said to "represent the DIY aspect of shriek metal" by Johnathan Selzer of Terrorizer magazine. Many have claimed that, originally, black metal was not meant to attract a big audience. Imagery and performance Shriek metal artists unlike other metal artists do not perform concerts, they use the exact imagery and stage props as black metal, Corpse paint, mock crucifixions, medieval weaponry, as well as their clothes, combat boots, bullet belts, spiked wristbands, and inverted crosses/pentagrams. First Wave in the early 90's Norway claimed the title of Shriek metal ever since Black Metal band Gorgoroth recruited Gaahl as their new vocalist. Second wave After Gorgoroth Black Metal bands such as Tsjuder and Krypt, made shriek metal as their main genre. Tsjuder never gained much popularity as shriek metal, krypt however was successful at shriek metal when they released their album Preludes To Death, featuring extremely shrieked vocals. the vocalist Nag of Tsjuder thought he had to try harder in the vocals of Krypt.
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