PAVOR was founded in 1987 near Bonn, Germany by guitarists Armin Rave and Holger Seebens. Constant improvement and increasing professionality led to three changes in the early line-up: Successively, Michael Pelkowsky (drums), Rainer Landfermann (bass) and Claudius Schwartz (vocals) replaced their predecessors.
PAVORs uncompromisingly high demand of quality in all concerns resulted in the delay of a first official release. Finally, during winter 1992/93, 28 minutes of "bemauling dark virtuosic underground music, insane blackness and brutality on a towering technical level" were recorded and released some months later as an untitled tape EP, which was sold out soon and is no longer available today. Due to its brilliant and highly professional music, lyrics and presentation, this product entailed euphoric responses from the worldwide scene:
"Just get yourself a copy of it and obey the new masters of TOTAL
DEATH!!"
(Frank Stöver, Voices From The Darkside, Germany)
"No silly fusion here, it's all gut-puking, gut-wrenching, fucking ugly
metal from start to finish - five tracks of truly heinous grinding death
slaughter, over 28 minutes worth of high class production, packaging
and terror!"
(Stevo, Gloves Of Metal, USA)
"Totally professional... five wonderfully destructive pieces of aural
devastation"
(Russ Smith, Terrorizer, UK)
"It's brutal with brains... PAVOR is straight, straight
to their goal, but aims with a technical development that isn't very often
found in today's bands."
(Harold Dekkers, MorticiaNumskull, Holland)
- just to quote some few.
After a year of composing and gigging, PAVOR re-entered
the studio during May/June/July 1994 to record their first full-length
album "A Pale
Debilitating Autumn".
Being produced by Rainer Landfermann and Bernd Gast, this recording
carried all characteristics of PAVOR to further extremes and incontestably
enthroned itself as the musically and technically most advanced album
of total death ever so far:
"Forget all other technical metal bands, this band
blows them all away! PAVOR plays very brutal but also the most original
Death Metal
and also the most technical you have ever fucked to dream about! Not
comparable to any other band! The musicians are real virtuosos, Atheist
are children compared to PAVOR!!"
Art Of Butchery Magazine (NL)
"I'm so FUCKING IMPRESSED... PAVOR have come up
with one of the most brutal, most honest and most dedicated PURE DEATH
METAL albums
for a really long time! All of them are superb musicians - they are
out for
perfect musicianship and straight ahead aggression!"
Frank Stöver, Voices From The Darkside (GER)
"Even after repeated listenings, I can't help but
just to sit in amazement at how talented this band is... PAVOR is extreme
technical
death, with as much to offer as Atheist, yet with the brutality of Immolation,
and the speed of Vader... a killer debut release! Hail PAVOR!"
Subversive Agenda Magazine (USA)
"The musicians are incredible... a masterpiece!!"
Final Holocaust Magazine (BEL)
"A jewel of timeless death metal... extremely talented
and ambitious musicians"
Rock Hard (GER)
"PAVOR fucking kills... You guys are perfect!!"
Holocaust Magazine (POL)
"A masterpiece... PAVOR set standards... packaging
and sound are really phenomenal!"
Cothurnus Magazine (GER)
"This one kills! A masterpiece."
Fear Of Life Magazine (NL)
"I bow at the altar of PAVOR! What can one do with
perfection? You really can't complain about ANYTHING here. This album
is well produced,
extremely well played, technically masterful and very memorable."
Eternal Darkness Magazine (USA)
Shortly after the release of "A Pale Debilitating Autumn", guitarist Holger Seebens had to leave the band because of him not being able to follow suit with the other musicians' strong technical development. PAVOR decided to continue as a four-piece.
During the years 1995 and 1996, PAVOR promoted the globally praised album with a huge amount of interviews and gigs and started preparing for the next album.
Organizational problems resulting from the jobs of some members, as well as a general state of being bored with the lameness and unoriginality of the scene led to a partial withdrawal from public relations work and the public in general during the following years; only being interrupted by Germany's biggest metal magazine RockHard featuring PAVOR with an interview and the track "Perplexer: Perdition Projectile" on its annual "best unsigned acts" compilation "Unerhört!" in February 2000, and by PAVOR winning the underground-contest held by Heavy Oder Was?!-magazine in June 2000, playing on the opening gig of the renowned BANG YOUR HEAD-festival in Balingen, Germany as a result.
However, PAVOR did not rest but took the time to work hard on the new songs and maximize the perfection of their material to an unsurpassable amount.
Now in the year 2003, PAVOR have finished the recordings of their inconceivably virtuoso and violent second album! Produced by Rainer Landfermann and Armin Rave, "FURIOSO" is an offensive exhibition of superiority - a perfect optimum of nonstop aggressive grimness and superlative virtuosic finesse!!
"FURIOSO" contains
eight masterly compositions with a total length of 52 minutes, featuring
...deep and insanely brutal, slime-dripping fucked-up ugly vocals full of character & personality
...intelligent, profound and intriguingly baleful lyrics
...extravagant, thrilling, furiously virtuoso guitar riffs and leads
...the fastest and most original basswork ever recorded on a metal album
...ingeniously intricate high-speed power-drumming.
Among the eight
songs is a re-recorded version of the PAVOR classic "Crucified Hopes",
which was composed in 1989.
The lyrics of the track "Dilettante's Dilemma" hint at an axiom that is - as mentioned in the CD booklet - actually encoded in the music of the song, highlighting the general close link between music and lyrics on the album and inviting the recipient to "decode" and find out what the dilemma really is...
In fact this is just one single example of the immense amount of detail both in the music and the lyrics of the whole album, so insert the CD, take your time and prepare to be perplexed!!