Panzerballett

Panzerballett is a München-based group active since 2004. Guitarist Jan Zehrfeld founds the band after spending a couple of years looking for musicians able to play his compositions. The original line-up starts as a quartet built around saxophone, guitar, bass and drums, and the group rehearses for half a year before beginning live performances.

Formation and early line-up

The first album appears in 2005 and features Jan Zehrfeld on guitar, Gregor Bürger on tenor saxophone, Flo Schmidt on bass and Max Bucher on drums. In 2006, Andreas Dombert joins on guitar and Sebastian Lanser joins as drummer. Alexander von Hagke joins on tenor saxophone and Heiko Jung on bass in 2009, and Joe Doblhofer joins as a second guitarist in 2011. The band’s listed members also include Florian Schmidt, Martin Mayrhofer and the musicians named above.

Style and influences

The group plays a fusion-based style that draws on funk, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz rock and progressive metal. Zehrfeld describes the original idea as a blend of Planet X and Tribal Tech, later replacing keyboards with saxophones because he does not find keyboard players. He also cites Meshuggah, Mats/Morgan, Dillinger Escape Plan, Screaming Headless Torsos and Allan Holdsworth among the direct influences. The music combines different elements from the members’ varied backgrounds and uses guitar sounds to create spacious textures without keyboards.

Composition and development

Zehrfeld leads the writing process. He records ideas on a computer, then composes the main theme and writes each individual part before passing the material to the other musicians for rehearsal. The group’s stated direction is to keep extending its mix of styles and to bring in more metal and jazz elements, including combinations such as latin jazz with grindcore, hard bop with death metal and disco funk with hardcore.

Name

The band name is presented with an explicit pacifist message, with Zehrfeld stating that anyone making a wrong assumption about the name should know that the group are absolute pacifists.

Recording activity

Work on the second album begins in May 2007.