10 Unlikely Instruments Used To Push The Boundaries of Metal

4. Didgeridoo

Once upon a time, many millennia ago, someone in ancient Australia picked up a stick which had been hollowed out by termites and blew in it! It was on that day the didgeridoo was born. While indigenous Australians claim that the instrument has been a part of their culture some 40,000 years, the oldest evidence of their existence is cave paintings dated to some 1,500 years. Regardless of how long the instrument has existed in Australia, the rest of the world was only recently introduced to it.

The didgeridoo is not a very diverse instrument in terms of the range of notes it is capable of creating, however its signature droning sound is dark and ominous by nature, unlike any other instrument out there is capable of creating. It is this dark and unique sound that has lead to its use in more metal songs than one might think.

Many metal bands have experimented with the instrument (including nu-metal funk act Incubus); however it seems to be more popular in black metal.

The didgeridoo tends to feature on tracks rather than being a fully fledged instrument. A good example of this ancient woodwind instrument being used is “Reptilian Ancestry” by Norwegian death metal band Diskord, where it appears in the middle of the song, in the form of a didgeridoo solo that nearly lasts two whole minutes.