Band:	Mekong Delta
Album:	The Music Of Erich Zann
Style:	Progressive thrash metal
Release date:	1988
Guest review by:	Horlequism

01. Age Of Agony
02. True Lies
03. Confession Of Madness
04. Hatred
05. Interludium (Begging For Mercy)
06. Prophecy
07. Memories Of Tomorrow
08. I, King, Will Come
09. The Final Deluge
10. Epilogue
11. The Gnom [bonus]

The Music of Erich Zaan brings to life a strange new take on thrash metal. Just like Mekong Delta's self-titled debut from the year before, 1988's Zaan fuses insane thrash riffing patterns with off-time drumming. With a vocalist that wails like a possessed off-key demon, this progressive thrash pioneer showed the metal community in the mid-late 80s that thrash metal and technical progressive histrionics as well as classical overtones can all fit together. Zaan flows marvelously for such a chaotic work of art, never tripping over its complex nature. There are a few odd skipping stops and starts that one would ignore as just a skip in the track. These seemingly mid-air freezes in time are what make Zaan so erratic and unpredictable. The songs never meander out of control though, kept in a tight little box from beginning to end. The song Hatred could be argued as the highlighting moment on The Music of Erich Zaan, beginning with a monologue of social outcry then without hesitation pushing forward into one of the albums most energetic yet still quirky and uneven arrays of technical madness. The call and response shouting from the band and then-vocalist Wolfgang Borgmann's tight-lipped high-pitched seething tenor makes for an interesting addition. Everything comes to a halt with Interludium (begging For Mercy), a mellow laid-back classical guitar instrumental, giving the listener a chance to breathe. Mekong Delta awakens us with a metallic instrumentation of the soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho, a previous version featuring only bass guitar and drum-set accompaniment to the string arrangement on their self-titled debut. The Music of Erich Zaan is still a meaty head banging affair of catchy upbeat thrash metal songs; the only difference is the added dimension of inconsistent progressive meter shifts and notations which gives the album its inventive originality. There will never be anything quite like Zaan again; a must have for those who are searching for a heavy metal ground-breaker. If it wasn't for Dances of Death, released two years later, The Music of Erich Zaan would stand out as Mekong Delta's best album, although already referred to as such.