location: Graz / Explosiv / Austria
date: 12/14/2017
Panzerballett sounds odd already as a band name. The music is undoubtedly even odder. Since 2005 the band has been putting out albums that you could roughly call jazz metal, but there’s much more going on in there. To avoid complicating things with academic interpretations, let’s just say Panzerballett can be defined as pretty extreme music. Jan Zehrfeld, the founder of the band, who spent some time playing in the German jazz outfit Passport, lists Tribal Tech, Planet X, Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Allan Holdsworth and others as influences. Comparisons to Frank Zappa pop up quickly, too. Not just because they recorded a “Zappa medley” on one album, but also because of the way they mash genres together. Overall, this is a band with no limits, which they’ve shown throughout their career with their wacky covers of Abba, Rammstein, AC/DC and more.
Zehrfeld and the crew certainly never run out of wacky covers. This year they surprised everyone with a Christmas album, X-Mas Death Jazz, on which they reworked some well-known Christmas songs. Of course, Panzerballett did it in their own original and unique way. So if a tune is known for its pleasant melody, Panzerballett went at it with their dissonant style and made it appropriately complex with jazzy rhythms. Suddenly those lovely little Christmas songs became exhausting to listen to and not the least bit singable!
Panzerballett decided to present the new Christmas album on a short European tour as well. The band doesn’t stop anywhere near Slovenia very often, but this time they made an exception and played Graz, where they delivered an exclusive set. Since this is an extreme band that complicates things and doesn’t play anything conventional, the turnout was, fittingly, pretty sad. Only a handful of people, the kind who swear by progressive and technical metal bands, gathered in front of the Explosiv club. And even among prog fans, Panzerballett can be a bit out of context.
Panzerballett work as a quintet, but this time they were joined by a third guitarist, Rafael Trujillo, who normally plays in the German progressive death metal band Obscura. The band’s drummer, Sebastian Lanser, plays in Obscura too. So these are musicians who work across different genres, which undoubtedly comes in handy in Panzerballett. With their takes on Christmas songs like White Christmas, Little Drummer Boy, For Whom the Jingle Bells Toll and Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the band quickly made it clear they’re seriously well-trained musicians with years and years of schooling behind them. The songs sounded complex; all that was left of the original was the familiar melody, while the rest was built on broken rhythms, atonality and heavy distortion. Trujillo helped the guitarists play in three-part harmonies, and on top of that there was a superb saxophone that helped push this controlled chaos to its peak. The saxophonist and the bassist helped themselves with sheet music, but on their solo spots they simply played their parts off the top of their heads. And despite every member standing out, it all worked as one entity. Zehrfeld may be the band’s leader, but on stage it didn’t seem like he wanted to put only himself in the spotlight. To spice up the program, and to explain things, Zehrfeld talked about a song and how he approached it to make it more special. To make a sweet Christmas tune sound even more morbid and unusual, Jan Zehrfeld picked up an eight-string guitar. The low tones came to the front, and Last Christmas sounded wicked and brutal. There was practically no song where you could predict anything.
After the Christmas set the band came back to play one more song. They went with Zehrfunk from the first album, where every member surprised with a part of their own, and those parts built the song up brilliantly and gave it an incredible flow. Despite the pretty complex music, Panzerballett are an easy band to listen to, one that surprises with comic touches too. With their peculiarity, Panzerballett may really not be right for larger crowds. The Christmas-flavored show was without a doubt a real treat for fans of complex and unconventional music. Definitely a gig that leaves a lasting impression.
author: Primož Novak
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
