Medieval metal is a subgenre of folk metal that blends heavy metal music with medieval folk music. Medieval metal is mostly restricted to Germany where it is known as or . The genre emerged from the middle of the 1990s with contributions from Subway to Sally, In Extremo and Schandmaul. The style is characterised by the prominent use of a wide variety of traditional folk and medieval instruments. History Precursors The medieval folk band Corvus Corax was formed in 1989 and released a debut album in the same year. The group relies on period instruments that include the cister, hurdy-gurdy, biniou, buccina, davul, riq and cornetto curvo with the most prominent being the shawm and bagpipes. They describe their approach as "louder, dirtier and more powerful than any interpretation of medieval music before." The result has been associated more with medieval taverns and pubs rather than the royal courts or church. While medieval metal is a German phenomenon, one of the inspirations for the genre is the English folk metal band Skyclad. Formed in 1990 as a thrash metal band, they added violins from session musician Mike Evans on several tracks from their debut album, The Wayward Sons of Mother Earth, with the song "The Widdershins Jig" acclaimed as "particularly significant" and "a certain first in the realms of Metal". The band added a full time violinist to their ranks and has since been credited not only as the originators and pioneers of folk metal but also as a direct inspiration for medieval metal bands. Origins The East German band Subway to Sally was formed in 1992 as a folk rock band, singing in English and incorporating Irish and Scottish influences in their music. With their second album MCMXCV released in 1995, the band adopted a "more traditional approach" and started singing in German. Taking Skyclad as an influence, Subway to Sally performs a blend of hard rock and heavy metal music "enriched with medieval melodies enmeshed in the songs via bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, lute, mandoline, shalm , fiddle and flute" and combined with "romantic-symbolic German-speaking poetry" in their lyrics. With chart success in their native Germany, they have since been credited as the band "that set off the wave of what is known as medieval rock." In the year 1994, a concert was organised in Berlin that featured a collaboration between a rock band known as Noah and members of