ZAR — “Sorted Out” (1991, Germany) Album Description:
Released in 1991 on Bellaphon’s Bacillus imprint, “Sorted Out” finds ZAR tightening their attack just as Europe’s metal landscape was shifting beneath their boots. Where trends were wobbling toward grunge and groove, ZAR doubled down on speed and power—writing with the economy of a hard rock outfit and executing with the precision of a metal unit. The result is an album that moves quickly, hits cleanly, and leaves a bright metallic afterglow.
Where 1991 Stood: World & Music Context
The early ’90s brought volatility—on headlines and on airwaves. As the Cold War cooled and new economies opened, rock’s center of gravity lurched from glossy arena sounds to leaner, noisier club instincts. In metal, Germany remained a bastion of velocity and melody, even as the U.S. and U.K. flirted with alt-rock upheaval. “Sorted Out” emerges from that fault line: a German studio record crafted with continental discipline, insisting that speed and songcraft could still coexist.
Speed/Power Metal in the Period
Speed and power metal share a handshake: brisk tempos, assertive rhythm guitars, and choruses built to carry rooms. In 1991, the genre’s conversation stretched from double-kick propulsion to bright, harmonized leads and anthem hooks. ZAR’s approach sits in the melodic quadrant—tight riff figures, articulated solos, and vocal lines that favor contour over grit. Think gallop rather than grind; uplift rather than abrasion. Where thrash chased severity, ZAR kept the light on melody and meter.
The Musical Exploration on “Sorted Out”
“Sorted Out” is sequenced like a set: open hard, keep the gears engaged, vary the color, and close with scale. Songs such as “The Devil Called My Name” and “Spellbound – Hellbound” drive on sharpened downstrokes and cleanly notated lead breaks. “In the Sign of the Elder” and “Marching with the Black” sketch mythic and martial tableaux, the kind of imagery that invites stacked backing vocals and halftime pivots. “Distant Thunder” flexes the band’s sense for dynamics—space around the kit, riffs that breathe before they bite—while “Stranded Heart” plays the emotive counterweight, letting harmony guitars carry feeling as much as lyrics do. Even compact tracks like “Carry On” treat the bridge as a dramaturgical hinge: modulation, statement solo, decisive return. It’s metal written with arrangement in mind.
Key Personnel & the Studio Frame
Production sits in the crosshairs of clarity and punch. Produced by Tommy Clauss and Jerry Schafer, the record balances assertive guitars with intelligible vocals, keeping the rhythm section forward without clouding the midrange. Recording and mixing by Tom Krüger at MTS Studio (Germany) give “Sorted Out” its crisp edges—tight gates on the drums, fast transients on the rhythm guitars, solos that lift without tearing the mix. It’s a studio-centric metal sound: articulate, fast, and dry enough to showcase the players’ hands.
The Band at This Juncture
The album spotlights a focused ZAR unit as credited on this release: Thommy Bloch, Jerry Schafer, Tommy Clauss, Bernd Gruenen, and Peter Kuempf. What you hear is a group operating like a precision team—arrangements trimmed to essentials, transitions choreographed for stage translation. The lineup reads like a studio-savvy coalition, with production and performance intertwined; that overlap often yields the kind of efficiency audible here: few wasted bars, themes stated and resolved.
How the Genre Lens Applies
Speed/power metal lives and dies by meter discipline and chorus design. ZAR’s meter is exact: drummers keeping double-kick patterns even at pace, bass nailing subdivisions, guitars using palm-mutes as punctuation rather than smother. Chorus design favors memorable intervals over sheer belt—hooks you can sing after one pass, reinforced by harmony lines. Leads speak in full sentences: a motif, a development, a return. On “Sorted Out,” virtuosity is not spectacle; it’s grammar.
Lyric Themes & Atmosphere
The titles tell the weather: devils, elders, marching columns, distant storms—the canon of classic metal imagery. But the delivery puts speed in service of scene-building: riffs carve corridors, drums lay flagstones, vocals hang banners. Even when the band leans into darker tropes, the tonal center remains major-mode friendly, giving the album that “bright steel” aura rather than pitch-black gloom.
Any Firestorms? The “Controversies” Question
“Sorted Out” didn’t set off cultural alarms; its frictions were inside-baseball. Some scene diehards argued labels—was this too melodic for the “thrash” bin, too fast for the “hard rock” shelf? Others debated production polish at a moment when rawness was becoming cool again. In practice, those frictions are part of its character: a fast, melodic German record released during a pivot year, refusing to dull its edges to match a new fashion.
Final Take (in the spirit of Mike Jahn)
ZAR plays like commuters who refuse to miss the last express: strict clocks, clean lines, no dithering on the platform. “Sorted Out” is metal engineered for forward motion—songs that know where they start, where they must arrive, and how to make the trip feel quick. In a season when many bands were changing outfits, ZAR showed up in tailored steel and asked the songs to do the talking.
