Where Are You?

Pit --FOUND!
Late 90's German metal band

Peter Schleutner, Frank Heeb, Jorn Mildner, and Stefan Heintzelman made up Pit, an innovative metal force from Hunstetten, Germany. The band had a very unique style which combined 80s era German hard rock with the epic power metal stylings of Grave Digger and Rage. But with this Teutonic fury, the band also played the part of the ruthless aggressor, adding a surprising element of 90s style hardcore to the mesh. The result is what the band refers to as Teutonicore, a sound that was done by Pit and only by Pit. A sound that was original, fresh, and revolutionary for metal at the time. The only problem; nobody was listening. After putting out two incredible metal albums, Pit returned to the dark regions of the Earth from whence they came, never to be heard or seen again.

Pit surfaced in 1996, with their debut record, oddly titled "Carnival License". The record was distrubuted by Baze Records in small circulation in Europe, making the disc rare even then. Now a copy of "Carnival License" on disc is hard to find, and normally carries a $50 price tag when it is spotted from time to time on the web. What is so great about this record?

From the opening track, "Trident Deathtool", Pit proves they aren't afraid of risks. Refusing to hop on the grunge or alternative band wagon of the time, Pit went against the grain and played true power metal glory, but mixed it up with the underlying fury of 90s aggression. The album spits and chugs rumblings of Rage and Grave Digger, but cross threads those rumblings with hardcore thrash ala Pantera and Machine Head. This truly unique style had never been done before. Bands were either "true" metal or they were considered hardcore. Nobody mixed the two.

Pit followed "Carnival License" with "Boneheads", a truly creative masterpiece. "Boneheads" was released in 1998, and again was loosely distrubuted by Baze Records in Europe. "Boneheads" was far superior to "Carnival License", with a production job that was on par with knob turners like Colin Richardson and Terry Date.

The act took each track and made it their own identity, putting a fresh bold take on the "old" sound. Tracks like "Time To Go", "Misfire", and "Das Zeichen" are fine slabs of German power metal, sounding like prime era Accept and Grave Digger, with a shocking blend of bay area thrash and hardcore. "Green Devils" was as heavy as death metal, but played at the speed of Kreator and Destruction. "Boneheads" was just revolutionary in every way. Again the only problem was nobody heard this amazing sound.

Pit had almost reinvented the German sound, combining the elements of old, but bringing an unbridled fury to those elements. Pit were redefining German power metal in 1996, at the exact same time that In Flames was redefining death metal in Sweden, almost doing the exact opposite of Pit by adding elements of old to an aggressive genre that had become stale with its simplicity and aggression. Pit made the old sound abrasive and emotional while In Flames smoothed the aggression with influences from the past such as Maiden and Thin Lizzy. You heard about In Flames, but Pit's work was unnoticed, like a great novel that has been shelved and never opened.

Pit deserved recognition for being creative, unique, and innovative. Pit needed to be heard. Pit needs to be mentioned in the same sentences as In Flames, Blind Guardian, and Pantera. All were influential, all were revolutionary, all were great.

After two incredible records, and a five year silence that begs to be stirred, where is Pit now?

---

Well, here is the email we got from PIT member, Peter Schleutner

Howdy EC ...

My name is Peter Schleutner. I was the PIT singer/bass player, wrote most of the music & all the lyrics of both cd's carnival license and boneheads.

Now, the story what happened. In 1996 PIT was formed in Mainz, a city near Frankfurt. Frank Heeb and I joined a band called "Races", which was well known in our area, but never made a cd, only demotapes. After the Races-Break we found Joern and PIT was born. We took the name from the E.A.Poe story "Pit and Pendulum". In a real short time we wrote the songs and recorded them at the Bazement Studios in Huenstetten with our old friend Markus Teske, a well known producer & studio technican in our area. But Baze was not a real label or a distributor - Markus just made this only for PIT. So we sent our stuff to every label and fanzine etc. - some fanzine's wrote good things about "carnival license" and we had some small independent distributors which sold & trade our cd around the world (2000 I think).

After the recording Stefan Heinzelmann joined us (he never played a tune on "carnival...") only for live gigs. But nothing really happened for us - no record label was interested... In the 90's there were so many new metal bands in Germany, everybody tried something - but the (German) record industry was absolutely not interested in a old school true metal bands in this times - grunge & crossover shit were the only bands they signed. We were very mad about that - and that was very good for boneheads - in 1998, after a lot live gigs around Germany we went back to Markus Teske and made something very different to what we (and all the other German bands) did before - we created Teutonicore - a mixture of German true metal, speed'n'trash and hardcore. Some German fanzines wrote we were traitors to the true metal - some wrote we were genius - but at last nobody was really interested - neither the big distributors nor any fucking record label! You can imagine how frustrated we were.

Shortly after Boneheads we fired Stefan Heinzelmann (as on "carnival.." no tune on "Boneheads" - just an live-sideman). As a classical three-piece we played since January 2000 - then we gave up - and now PIT is history. Frank is now a guitar-teacher, Joern play in a mainstream rock band called April Moon - I play guitar in a band called Springtoifel at the moment... Rest in peace, PIT :o)

[Other Maximum Metal Columns]

<< back >>