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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 PsalmsPsalms Tehilim , in Hebrew) is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, and of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Because the book consists of songs or chants, a psalm can be used to mean any religious chant or poem of praise. This article, however, d chant Al Taster. The song opened with ShofarA shofar is a ram's horn that is used as a musical instrument for religious purposes. It is used on Judaism's high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In the Bible and rabbinic literature The shofar is mentioned frequently in the Bible, from Exodus blowing and the chant was sung by duet of clean female vocals and distorted male vocals.
Salem music is a combination of doomdeath (slow-paced death metalDeath metal is a form of heavy metal music which emerged in the United States (especially Florida), Europe (especially the United Kingdom and Sweden) and Canada in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Black metal is often closely related. Death metal has, like) with Oriental elements and black metalBlack metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music. Death metal is often closely related. Black metal has proven somewhat difficult to categorize. Some fans and musicians have a firm concept of genre and subgenre, but others reject such categorization as limi singing voice (distorted hoarse screams). Riffing, hencforth, can range from slow and heavy doom metalDoom metal is a form of heavy metal music that emerged as a recognized genre in the mid 1980s. The sound is slow and heavy and intended to evoke an atmosphere of darkness, despair, tension and doom. It is influenced particularly by the early work of Black riffing to very fast and rapid black metalBlack metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music. Death metal is often closely related. Black metal has proven somewhat difficult to categorize. Some fans and musicians have a firm concept of genre and subgenre, but others reject such categorization as limi 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".