Artist: Panzerballett
Label: ACT Music
Release: 2009
Runtime: 56:58
Rating: 4.3/5
Panzerballett, a heavy metal ballet of tanks moving to a jazz beat. Bipolar pounding on the drums and delicate plucking of guitar strings, soft slapping of the bass and the occasional gentle scream. Panzerballett is what happens when you try to fire a tank in time with a ballet. Or, to quote bandleader and guitarist Jan Zehrfeld: “We combine Latin jazz with grindcore, hard bop with death metal, disco-funk with hardcore.” All that and more is promised by the new album from the German jazz-metallers, “Hart Genossen von Abba bis Zappa”. But this isn’t exactly the start of the story, because the Panzerballett crew have put out three albums, counting “Hart Genossen von Abba bis Zappa”, in a good six years on the progressive rock scene.
The Germans formed in 2004 under the baton of the aforementioned Jan Zehrfeld, who wanted to create a German Tribal Tech. Sadly, he couldn’t find a keyboardist to his taste, so he added saxophones to the band instead, which certainly helped shape the signature Panzerballett sound. From the start, the band has carried the aura of Frank Zappa and his avant-garde approach to music. The musicians love a good joke, as you can tell from their name alone. Despite that name, Zehrfeld insists they’re all complete pacifists.
The considerable success of the first two albums fired the Germans up so much that they served their fans a fresh helping of eclectic jazz-metal madness as quickly as they could. As with everything so far, “Hart Genossen von Abba bis Zappa” features a nice number of covers, which have become pretty much the band’s trademark. So far, Panzerballett have tested their creative chops on tracks like Birdland, Pink Panther, Smoke on the Water, Thunderstruck and so on. This time around, the musicians don’t disappoint anyone who was hoping for another reinterpretation of some legendary musical works.
That’s exactly the kind of piece that opens the album. Panzerballett put The Simpsons up on the silver screen for us. Darker than ever before. As the intro sequence unfolds before your eyes, you can’t help but let your jaw drop at such a fantastic cover. Even when the band swerves into traditional jazz waters, everything still stays firmly in Simpsons territory, even though the music itself is completely different. Lest the funk run dry, the next track, “Bird Wild Web,” follows “The Simpsons” and doesn’t hold out long without metal interjections. In their classic role, Panzerballett mix jazz and metal into the funk, with interesting sax and guitar bits. The track “Jadoo” is a somewhat heavier representative of the metal side, but sooner or later our ears get hit by the jazzy soloing of saxophonist Doldinger. Yet another combination of nonstop bass-pedal kicking and the pleasant sound of tenor and soprano sax leaves us anything but cold.
“Mein Teil” is the first track with vocals. What initially looks like a classic smooth-jazz number quickly veers into metal waters. The expected Panzerballett approach gets a real boost this time from vocals and backing vocals, which add a great deal of harmony to an already crammed fusion of all sorts of things. You’ll definitely recognize “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” from the title – it’s an Abba song, of course, which Panzerballett reinterpret in a phenomenal way. Less heavy metal and more rock this time, with a healthy dose of jazz, naturally. Bass and sax duets, guitar solo sections in between … It all comes together into a wonderful whole that’s a must for the ears of Abba fans and lovers of jazz, rock and metal alike. With “Kulturzeit” the band returns to darker waters, but this time they build more on atmosphere than on sawing away. And they pull it off damn well, it has to be said. The dark ambience created by the two saxophones and the guitars is simply breathtaking. The melody, the common thread, may suffer a little, but we don’t even notice, because the darkness pulls us in too hard. With this, Panzerballett prove themselves in yet another musical arena.
The second half of the album takes us to the Mediterranean and into ethno rhythms. “The Mediterranean Breeze”, the longest piece on the album, counts as one of Panzerballett’s ballads, if you can even call it that. Now it’s melody and guitar soloing’s turn, and not the fast-fingered, technical kind, but sensual and, well, Mediterranean. Still, the track itself comes off as average next to their previous masterpieces. “Ein Bisschen Frieden” serves us vocals by Conny Kreitmeier once again. Sadly, this is the weakest song on the album. The switch from pop-rock mediocrity to metal fury is, unfortunately, predictable and lacks any real innovation. It doesn’t fit the band’s image so far, so it doesn’t reach their standards either. “Weary Eyes”, on the other hand, is much more my cup of tea. A bit less jazz, a bit more death metal, and Panzerballett manage to grab the listener’s attention again. Of course, the track will go down much better with hardcore fans, mostly thanks to Zehrfeld’s screams, but the jazz-tinged parts are certainly very interesting and, in the end, satisfying listening.
The last part of the album serves up a real treat – two medleys of Zappa covers. The first includes “Let’ Make The Water Turn Black”, “Harry, You’re A Beast” and “The Orange County Lumber Truck”, the second “Oh No”, “City of Tiny Lights” and “Evelyn, A Modified Dog”. These are pretty interesting covers, cleverly strung together into medleys, and they’re definitely among the album’s highlights. Hard to say much more. They run on Panzerballett’s signature swapping of rhythm and genre, with a few vocals, playfulness and avant-garde inventiveness, which suits Zappa just fine … You simply have to hear the medleys. Naturally, they’ll thrill Frank Zappa fans the most.
With “Hart Genossen von Abba bis Zappa,” Panzerballett spread the word about themselves as a band with plenty of innovation and musical know-how. Both come wrapped in a slick compositional talent, for which Jan Zehrfeld is of course responsible. The music itself opens up new possibilities, for the band and the listener alike, offers interesting covers (and there are plenty of them) and generally rises above today’s musical average. Put simply, this band plays and spreads good music.
Lineup
Jan Zehrfeld – guitar, backing vocals
Martin Mayrhofer – guitar, vocals
Alexander von Hagke – tenor saxophone
Gregor Bürger – tenor and soprano saxophone
Heiko Jung – bass guitar
Sebastian Lanser – drums
Guests:
Klaus Doldinger – saxophone
Okan Ersan – guitar
Conny Kreitmeier – vocals
Ernst Ströer – percussion
Andy Lind – vocals, synthesizer
Production
Jan Zehrfeld
Tracklist
01. The Simpsons
02. Bird Wild Web
03. Jadoo
04. Mein Teil
05. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
06. Kulturzeit
07. The Mediterranean Breeze
08. Ein bisschen Frieden
09. Weary Eyes
10. Zappa Medley From Hell – Part I
11. Zappa Medley From Hell – Part II
