Jolly Roger Records, jewelcase CD, Reactor (Augsburg, Bavaria in Germany) were founded in 1988 by Muck Langmair (drums, former Veto) and Markus Baier (guitar), then Thorsten Schwalm (guitar), Robert Käfferlein (bass) and Jerry Bryant (vocals) completed the line-up. First sessions and the influences of bands like early Us Riot and Metal Church and German Scanner and early Helloween gave a clear idea of the band's direction, melodic speed metal! The first gig was at the Clochard club in Augsburg in 1989, where Deep Purple played one of their first concerts in Germany. Then a first demo followed and from 1989 to 1990 the band played more than 70 shows, mainly in Germany. In 1991, the band recorded first album "Rather Dead Than Dishonored" which had pretty good success in Japan, entering the Japanese Top 100 Import Charts climbing at 4th position. In 1992 they played all over Germany and the year after they recorded the second album "Revelation" which was licensed also for Japan by Zero Corporation who took care also for the Japanese pressing of debut album. In the same year, shortly after a live performance at the Horror Infernal Festival in Dortmund, featuring bands like Accuser, Morgoth, Carcass, Jerry and Muck left the band. Markus Sturz entered as new drummer, while S.L. Coe (former Angel Dust, Scanner and already friend of the band, credited as producer for "Revelation") as new singer. In 1995 was the turn for "Farewell to Reality" which received good feedbacks in radios and magazines, to mention german Metal Hammer review of the album: "Heavy Metal powerforce of first quality. People who like Judas Priest (Painkiller), Phantom or Riot will be fascinated from the Reactor enterprise”. But the year later Coe and Schwalm left the band which remained as trio with bassist Käfferlein also as singer. Then they released "A Short Fairy Tale" (1998), Hans Reichelt joined as second guitarist and Daniel Unzner as new bass player so that Käfferlein could focus only on singing. In 2000 the band released the "Augschburg" single, a fan-song for the Augsburg Panthers (local ice-hockey team) and in 2004 "No Rest Yet", the last album before they split in 2006. Instead of other early 90s' band who kept inspirations from 80's German classic metal big-bands (Helloween, Accept to mention few) Reactor preferred to follow typical german melodic speed-metal sounding more like earlier Rage, Scanner and Blind Guardian with a touch of early Running Wild. Available for the first time on vinyl and first Cd reprint since 1993.
| Item weight: | 0,11 kg |
