REACTOR
RATHER DEAD THAN DISHONOURED

Reactor (Augsburg, Bavaria in Germany) was founded in 1988 by Muck Langmair (drums, former Veto) and Markus Baier (guitar), then Thorsten Schwalm (guitar), Robert Käfferlein (bass), and Jerry Bryant (vocals). The first sessions and the influences of bands like early Us Riot and Metal Church, German Scanner, and early Helloween gave a clear idea of the band's music: melodic speed metal! The first gig was at the Clochard Club in Augsburg in 1989, where Deep Purple played one of their first concerts in Germany. Then a first demo followed, and from 1989 to 1990, the band played more than 70 shows, mainly in Germany. In 1991, the band recorded their first album, "Rather Dead Than Dishonored," which had pretty big success in Japan, entering the Japanese Top 100 Import Charts and climbing to 4th position. In 1992, they played all over Germany, and the year after, they recorded the second album, "Revelation," which was licensed for Japan by Zero Corporation, which also took care of the Japanese pressing of their debut album. In the same year, shortly after a live performance at the Horror Infernal Festival in Dortmund, featuring bands like Accu§er, Morgoth, Carcass, Jerry, and Muck, the band left. Markus Sturz entered as a new drummer, while S.L. Coe (former Angel Dust, Scanner, and already friend of the band, credited as producer for "Revelation") entered as a new singer. 1995 was the turn for "Farewell to Reality," which received good feedback in radios and magazines, to mention the Metal Hammer review of the album: "Heavy Metal power force of first quality. People who like Judas Priest (Painkiller), Phantom, or Riot will be fascinated by the Reactor Enterprise". But a year later, Coe and Schwalm left the band, which stayed as a trio with bassist Käfferlein also as singer. Then they released "A Short Fairy Tale" (1998), and Hans Reichelt joined as second guitarist and Daniel Unzner as new bass player so that Käfferlein could focus only on singing. In 2000, the band released the single "Augschburg," a fan song for the Augsburg Panthers (a local ice hockey team), and in 2004, "No Rest Yet,"  the last album before they split in 2006.

Instead of other early 90s' bands that kept inspiration from 80's German classic metal big bands (Helloween, Accept, to mention a few), Reactor preferred to follow typical German melodic speed-metal sounding more like earlier Rage, Scanner, and Blind Guardian with a touch of early Running Wild.