folk metal
- noun
- /foʊk ˈmɛtəl/
:
folk metal
- Folk metal combines heavy guitar riffs with traditional instruments, creating a unique sound that celebrates cultural heritage.
Examples
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The band's latest album features elements of folk metal, blending powerful vocals with acoustic melodies from their homeland.
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At the festival, we enjoyed several folk metal performances that showcased both the energy of metal and the charm of folk traditions.
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There was even a Serbian folk-metal scene where Serb chicks went gigging for hooting audiences of war criminals.
Fiction book (1996)
How Folk-like
18
2.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
folk + metal
The noun–noun compound combines 'folk' (traditional/community music) with 'metal' (the music genre), so the meaning — a metal subgenre incorporating folk elements — is directly inferable from the constituents and the genre-naming pattern. This compositional pattern is common in English and other languages and the example context ('folk metal bands') makes the musical sense of 'metal' clear, so a B1 learner who knows both words would likely understand it.
Etymology
Folk metal began in the 1990s when some bands mixed loud electric metal music—guitars and drums—with traditional folk sounds like flutes, violins and old village songs. So the name folk metal simply shows it is a 'type of music' that blends both folk and heavy metal styles.