Parallel to all this, as a true electric guitarist Jan Zehrfeld digs it when the music comes across loud and hard. When he’s playing with the Munich quartet SLID, Zehrfeld prefers the more progressive, odd-meter variation of speed metal combined with hardcore, "speedcore"; its screaming riffs and dark sounds race in the direction of such groups as Slayer and Exodus. Considering the musical conjunction of brutal heaviness and complexity to be thrilling, he joined Schizofrantik, an experimental metal band playing "zappaesque" compositions; or LIND, a studio project blending hardcore with electronica and traces of jazz fusion. At the same time, his urge for freedom of improvising led him to interesting cooperations with several bands, whose music incorporated such elements at different grades: Eternal Quest (funkjazz), bobbycar (jazz/drum&bass), bastian (indiejazz), Oscar Kraus & die Bedrohung (crossover-pop) or Earforce (funk/fusion). The combination of jazz-inspired improvisation with headbanging heaviness and ingenious intricacy are musical combinations that, at least in Germany, are seldom heard; over the nearly four years of its existence, Panzerballett has attempted to “combine the floating suppleness of ballet with the crash-bang power of a tank,” as Zehrfeld phrased it. 

An audacious combination of jazz and heavy metal. More than ever, the motto “head banging with brains” holds true for this Panzerballett.