Traitor

About Traitor

The story of TRAITOR begins in 2009 when, after various fun projects by the individual band members, things finally get serious. In the same year two demos are released, “Thrash Metal Victory” and “Inclination To Aggression”, which earn some pretty hefty laurels in the underground – so the direction is right. After another trial balloon in the form of a demo (“Nuclear Combat”, 2010), work begins on the first full-length album. The Balingen lads hammer out their debut, which more than deserves the name “Thrash Command”. Situated where Bay Area and German thrash overlap, singing drummer Andreas Mozer – whose voice is reminiscent of a young Mille Petrozza – and his lads set off a riff firework display as if fired from an anti-aircraft gun in the living room. At the end of 2013, Matthias Koch joins the band as a new guitarist and gives the lads a good hard kick up the backside, as bassist Lorenz Kandolf reports: “Matthias is more technical than his predecessor, but like us he loves old-school thrash. We already had a few songs finished, but his stock phrase was: That needs to be more brutal.”

That extra shovelful of brutality and the accelerator pedal pushed right down to the floor suit TRAITOR damn well, and on top of that their reputation as a fantastic live band means that the old guard of Teutonic thrash may well move up a bit and keep a place warm for the four lads from Balingen in the upper ranks of the metal press's soundchecks. Or, even better, simply record a song with them. Which is exactly what happened on the upcoming album “Exiled to The Surface”. None other than Ruhrpott veteran Tom Angelripper of SODOM insisted on lending his unmistakable voice to “Total Thrash”, the title song delivered by TRAITOR for the documentary of the same name about Teutonic thrash, released in German cinemas on 31 May 2022. If that isn't a knighthood?! And in other respects, too, the record, recorded with Kai Stahlenberg at Studio B, has no need to hide behind its predecessors. Quite the opposite: the youngsters of old have finally outgrown their baby shoes and can easily play with the big boys. After the atmospheric intro “Guilty As Charged”, they hammer away so precisely that your neck muscles are begging for mercy by halfway through the running time at the latest, the title track “Exiled To The Surface” immediately drills through your eardrums with its beastly vocals, and you could probably find “66 Exeter Street” on Google Maps in SLAYERhausen. On top of that, TRAITOR have come up with something very special. What? That won't be revealed (yet), but they are probably the first metal band that can get you WHAMmed.

The lyrics were once again inspired by video games, films and series such as “Star Trek” or “The X-Files”; the matching artwork was developed and created, as with “Decade Of Revival”, by Swedish artist Pär Olofson (EXODUS, ABORTED and many more).

And anyone who still hasn't had enough for their ears should check out the riff school “Riff-Command”, due out later this year, in which the keen listener gets to look over the guitarists' shoulders and can then hammer out their favourite songs themselves. -Joni De Groot-

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