Symphonic metal
music genre that blends heavy metal with classical music
Symphonic metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that makes use of symphonic or orchestra elements. The style can feature different elements of orchestral or classical music, such as symphonic instruments, choirs and sometimes a full orchestra, keyboard orchestration emulating a full orchestra, or compositional influences from classical and orchestral music.
The roots of symphonic metal date to the 1960s and '70s with early metal bands such as Deep Purple recording with a full orchestra and Black Sabbath using an orchestral string section. The genre saw more development in the 1980s and '90s as bands emphasized their symphonic side by adding more ambitious classical features, developing their neoclassical guitar playing in a baroque direction, adding large multi-voice choirs, and writing lengthy songs influenced by orchestral structures. Some symphonic metal bands also started to feature classically trained vocalists, in which case they were attributed nicknames such as opera metal or operatic metal.
Perhaps the most prominent examples of symphonic metal are Swedish band Therion, Finnish band Nightwish, Italian band Rhapsody of Fire, Dutch bands After Forever, Epica, and Within Temptation, Norwegian band Dimmu Borgir, and American band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. These bands also have strong influences from film scores in addition to the more basic classical components utilized more widely in the genre. Some of the main composers in this style of metal music are classically trained.
Musical characteristics
The metal subgenres most typically featuring a subset of symphonic bands are gothic metal, power metal, black metal, death metal and classic heavy metal. As with many other metal bands, those adopting a symphonic style may feature influences from several metal subgenres.
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This entry incorporates text from “Symphonic metal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.