PANZERBALLETT - STARKE STUCKE - 2008

Guitarist Jan Zehrfeld is the founder of this German fusion based band. In 2004 he concluded a couple of years search for skilled musicians to play his compositions. The starting point was a quartet of saxophone, guitar, bass and drums. They then rehearsed for half a year and started performing live. In 2005 they released their first s/t album. This albums features Zehrfeld on guitar, Gregor Bürger on tenor saxophone, Flo Schmidt on bass and Max Bucher on drums. In 2006 another guitarist, Andreas Dombert, was added to the lineup. A new Austrian drummer, Sebastian Lanser, has also joined in recently.

Music:
Jan says that at first his vision was a mix between Planet X and Tribal Tech, but he replaced the keyboardist with saxophones, as he did find any keyboards player. When asked for direct musical influces he mentions Meshuggah, Mats/Morgan, Dillinger Escape Plan, Screaming Headless Torsos, and Allan Holdsworth.
Their music as Jan says, while being fusion based has various facets to it, some of it derived from funk and metal. This diverse sound is in part due to the fact that each band member comes from a somewhat different background and has an affinity for different musical types. Another reason that Jan mentions is the experimentation with guitar sounds to cover up the fact that there are no keyboards and yet he wants spacey elements in his music.
His vision of their future path includes further evolving in this current direction of fusing styles, and bringing in more metal and jazz elements. To quote his words: “…combing latin-jazz with grindcore, hard-bop with death metal, or disco-funk with hardcore”.

Jan is the leader of this group and this shows also in how compositions are done. Using his computer to record his ideas, he goes on composing the theme and then writes each of the individual parts and hands it to his band mates. Then all is left is to rehearse it.

The recording for the second album will begin in May 2007 and the songs are already composed.

As for the band name, Jan’s message is:
“Anyone misunderstanding or drawing a possibly wrong conclusion from our band name: We are absolute pacifists!”.