Armored ballet

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Armored ballet
General information
origin Munich , Germany
Genre (s) Jazzcore , jazz rock , metal , funk
founding 2004
Website www.panzerballett.de
Current occupation
Jan Zehrfeld
Electric guitar
 Joe Doblhofer
Alexander von Hagke
Heiko Jung
Sebastian Lanser
former members
Gregor Bürger
Florian Schmidt
Andreas Dombert
Max Bucher
Electric guitar
 Martin Mayrhofer
Jan Zehrfeld
Panzerballett, Offside Festival 2008

Panzerballett is a Munich quintet under the direction of guitarist, composer and arranger Jan Zehrfeld , whose music style can best be described as jazz metal .

history

After several years of searching the studied guitarist and composer drummed Jan Zehrfeld in 2004 some musicians together with whom he his idea of jazz - and metal could implement -inspirierter, complex music: "I'm always angry at something. That's why I founded "Panzerballett" in 2004. In this band I compose pieces according to the motto "Why easy when it's difficult?" At the same time I can channel aggression. "

In 2005, after a few appearances , the Panzerballett project released its first CD of the same name on its own, which received rave reviews among other things in the German progressive rock scene. In the coming months the band played a number of concerts, mostly in the Munich region, but also among others. a. as part of the 15th nationwide young jazz festival in Leipzig and at the renowned Burg-Herzberg-Festival . Panzerballett also produced the live DVD Live at Backstage Munich 2006 .

After several line-up changes, the band was signed to the jazz label ACT in 2007 and released their second album Starkestücke there in February 2008 , which was presented as part of a small tour of Germany and in March 2008 reached number 26 in the German jazz charts .

Many concerts and short appearances followed in the course of 2008 - including at the Zappanale , the Leverkusener Jazztage (in the opening act by John McLaughlin and Chick Corea ; a 60-minute recording of this appearance was broadcast by WDR in the Rockpalast series ), the Baltic Prog Fest and the self-organized "1st Metal Jazz Fest" in Munich. The band has also made shorter television appearances (on arte , 3sat and WDR ).

In August 2009 Panzerballett released their third album Hart genossen - Von Abba bis Zappa , which made it to number 25 in the jazz charts in September 2009 and was named "Record of the Month" by the drum magazine drums & percussion in the January / February 2010 issue was chosen. The band then played concerts and short appearances all over Germany (including as a guest in the arte lounge and on on3 radio ).

music

Panzerballett at Wacken Open Air 2016

Panzerballett play both original compositions by guitarist Zehrfeld as well as his (strongly alienating the original) arrangements of well-known songs from rock (for example Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple ), pop (for example A little peace by Nicole ), jazz (for example Birdland by Weather Report ) and soundtrack ( e.g. Simpsons theme song ). The musicians are influenced by classical jazz and funk musicians on the one hand and hard progressive metal bands like Meshuggah on the other. The song title Iron Maiden Voyage (a play on words with the band name of the metal formation Iron Maiden and the jazz standard Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock ) illustrates this combination of styles.

An important characteristic of Panzerballett's music is the virtuosity of its performance - the studied and in some cases award-winning musicians have mastered their instruments at a high technical level. The highly complex, polyrhythmic musical structures of Zehrfeld's compositions and arrangements could not be implemented otherwise.

Die Zeit writes about Panzerballett: »They flank their own pieces with a number of hard rock, jazz and entertainment hit songs, which they shredded and reassembled so unconditionally with the impeccable technique of musicians trained at German universities that they were recognized and amazed Keep the balance «.

The band itself describes their music as "filigree interlocking funk grooves combined with brutally hard, rhythmically complex riffs and jazz improvisations " as "wellness death jazz" or, with a wink, as "like with a white-hot morning star in grandma's freshly baked carrot cake ".

Jan Zehrfeld names the bands Meshuggah (about which he even wrote his thesis), Tribal Tech , Planet X and Mats Morgan as the main musical influences and role models .

Concerts

Panzerballett are also known for extraordinary concerts. The band's humor, which is only hinted at on CD (e.g. by song titles such as Schmitz Kadtse and Mit Weißglühendem Morgenstern in Grandma’s freshly baked carrot cake, or even the vocal pieces with Conny Kreitmeier , e.g. Zickenterror II ), appears in theirs Live performances are more evident: especially guitarist Zehrfeld, wearing a cable Rasta wig and sunglasses, delivers a stage show with exaggerated facial expressions and gestures, dancing and jumping as well as exuberant headbanging . His improvised nonsense announcements are reminiscent of Helge Schneider here and there .

In August 2016 the band performed for the first time at the Wacken Open Air .

Collaboration with other artists

So far, Conny Kreitmeier, Mattias Eklundh , Klaus Doldinger , Ulf Wakenius , Nguyên Lê , Peter O'Mara , Okan Ersan and Trilok Gurtu have played with Panzerballett live and / or in the studio .

Discography

  • 2005: Panzerballett
  • 2007: Live at Backstage Munich 2006 (DVD)
  • 2008: strong pieces
  • 2009: Hard Comrades - From ABBA to ZAPPA
  • 2012: Tank Goodness
  • 2013: Live at Theatron Munich 2013 (DVD)
  • 2015: Breaking Brain
  • 2017: X-Mas Death Jazz

Web links

Commons : Panzerballett  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Zehrfeld on his MySpace profile
  2. ↑ http://www.drumsundpercussion.de/index.php?id=253
  3. ↑ http://www.arte.tv/de/Kultur-enthaben/3079202.html ( Memento from April 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ http://www.on3-radio.de/_videos/1139/panzerballett-mwmiofr-live-at-on3-radio#/_videos/1139/panzerballett-mwmiofr-live-at-on3-radio ( memento from 1. June 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Stefan Hentz for "Die Zeit" on March 13, 2008
  6. ↑ Band presentation on www.panzerballett.de
  7. ↑ "Sounds like" description on the MySpace profile of the band
  8. ↑ Jan Zehrfeld in a video interview at the Offside Festival 2008
  9. ↑ Wacken Open Air - detailed view of the band 2016. In: www.wacken.com. Retrieved January 8, 2017 .
  10. ↑ PANZERBALLETT - the review for "X-Mas Death Jazz" on metal.de . In: metal.de . ( metal.de [accessed on December 3, 2017]).