Mekong Delta

Germany's Mekong Delta surfaced in 1987 as an enigmatic presence in heavy metal, confounding observers through an atypical strain of progressive thrash while shielding the identities of its personnel for the first five years. Far less dramatic circumstances eventually surfaced: Aaarrg Records owner Ralph Hubert had devised the project to combine players already active in Rage and Living Death, thereby sidestepping contractual conflicts with those bands' labels. Hubert had not planned to perform himself, yet stepped into the bass role under the alias Björn Eklund after Rage's Peavy Wagner departed before recording began; he then assembled the remainder of the original lineup with vocalist Kell (Wolfgang Borgmann), guitarists Rolf Stein and Vincent St. John (Living Death's Frank Fricke and Reiner Kelch), and drummer Gordon Perkins (Rage's Jörg Michael at the time).

This configuration recorded the Vietnam-themed, conceptually cohesive Mekong Delta debut in 1987, followed by the 1988 The Gnome EP and the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired The Music of Erich Zann LP, releases that earned widespread praise and prompted descriptions of the band as a Teutonic counterpart to Voivod. Subsequent personnel shifts occurred quietly, with Uwe Baltrusch replacing Kelch on the 1989 The Principle of Doubt album, which drew loosely from Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever trilogy. By 1990's Dances of Death, Fricke had also exited, Doug Lee had taken Borgmann's place, and the pseudonyms were abandoned except for Michael's, still bound by obligations elsewhere. Even after the veil lifted, Mekong Delta sustained its capacity to astonish by steadily incorporating classical elements into its exploratory prog-thrash framework.

Although those classical touches had appeared across earlier works, the 1991 Live at an Exhibition album first signaled a deepening preoccupation with Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, fully realized in the orchestra-accompanied Pictures at an Exhibition recording of 1997. In the intervening years, Peter Haas joined on drums for 1992's Kaleidoscope and 1994's Visions Fugitives, yet after the orchestral release the band entered prolonged inactivity amid intermittent reports of Hubert's exile or demise. Those claims proved unfounded, and in 2007 Hubert assembled a fresh Mekong Delta lineup with singer Leszek Szpigiel, guitarist Peter Lake, and drummer Uli Kusch to deliver Lurking Fear, an album that retained the group's signature unpredictability.