Formed in Frankfurt in 1982, still going with three of the original members, never split up, never changed direction, and never once written a song about anything other than drinking. It is the most consistent career in this entire history and it is also, obviously, a joke.
The premise
Every other German thrash band in 1985 was writing about nuclear war, state violence and damnation. Tankard noticed this, decided somebody should write about beer instead, and then did so for forty years without breaking character once.
The joke works because the music does not wink. Zombie Attack in 1986, recorded at Musiclab with Harris Johns like everything else that mattered from that scene, is a fast, well played, genuinely aggressive thrash record that happens to be about drinking.
Why it lasted
Because they never had a reputation to lose. A band whose entire proposition is beer cannot be accused of selling out, cannot be accused of losing its edge, and cannot disappoint anybody by failing to develop.
That immunity turned out to be worth more than credibility. Through the 1990s, when every serious band in the genre was being told to restyle, nobody suggested Tankard should make a groove record, because there would have been no point. They carried on, playing to the same audiences, releasing at roughly the same rate.
The line up
Andreas Geremia has sung on every record since the start. Frank Thorwarth has played bass since 1982. That is a forty year continuous partnership, which almost nothing else in this genre can claim.
The fourth member, as the band have said themselves more than once, is the beer, and the sleeves have carried a mascot to that effect for decades.
| Album | Year | Label | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zombie Attack | 1986 | Noise | The debut, at Musiclab |
| Chemical Invasion | 1987 | Noise | The best of the early ones |
| The Morning After | 1988 | Noise | The formula settled |
| The Meaning of Life | 1990 | Noise | The end of the first phase |
| Everything since | 1992 onwards | Various | The same, reliably |
Whether it is any good
The early records genuinely are. Chemical Invasion and The Morning After are fast, tight, well written German thrash that would be well regarded on the merits if the subject matter were nuclear war.
The later catalogue is more variable and more or less interchangeable, which the band would not dispute. A listener who wants one Tankard record has a clear answer; a listener who wants twelve is describing a hobby rather than a musical judgement.
What they prove
Two things, and both are more serious than the subject matter suggests.
That consistency is a legitimate artistic position. A band who found what they were for in 1985 and never deviated has produced a body of work with a shape that most careers in this genre lack.
And that not taking yourself seriously has enormous survival value. Every band in this history who took itself seriously spent the 1990s being asked to become something else, and the one who wrote about beer was left alone to carry on.
The rest of the German scene is in Teutonic Thrash, and the deeper end of it is in Why Was German Thrash More Extreme?.
The Frankfurt scene
Worth a paragraph, because Tankard did not appear from nothing. Frankfurt had a functioning metal scene in the early 1980s with venues, a local press and several bands, and it was distinct from the Ruhr in temperament as well as geography.
Where Essen and Gelsenkirchen were industrial towns watching their employers leave, Frankfurt was a banking city with money in it. That is a considerably less grim place to be seventeen, and it is not entirely a coincidence that the band who decided thrash could be funny came from there.
Exumer came out of the same scene and went in the opposite direction, which suggests the geography sets conditions rather than outcomes.
The records worth having
Chemical Invasion is the one. It is faster and better written than the debut, the production is the best of the early run, and the songs hold up entirely on the music.
The Morning After in 1988 is close behind and has the band's most famous artwork. After that the catalogue settles into a pattern that has held for thirty five years, and the honest advice is to take one album per decade unless the joke has genuinely landed.
What the band think of it
They have been consistently and cheerfully clear that the premise is a premise. Geremia has said in interviews that the band could not now write about anything else even if they wanted to, and that the audience would not accept it, and he does not appear to regard that as a problem.
There is a version of this story where forty years of beer songs is a trap. On the evidence of the interviews it is closer to the opposite: a band who worked out early what they were for, never had to have a difficult conversation about direction, and are still touring with three of the original members.
Why they belong in a serious history
Because a genre is judged partly by what it permits, and Tankard are the evidence that this one permitted more than its reputation suggests. A scene that could produce records about chemical weapons and records about lager, on the same label, in the same studio, with the same engineer, was broader than the standard account allows.
They are also, incidentally, the answer to anybody who claims thrash bands take themselves too seriously. Four decades of consistent output is a serious achievement in service of an entirely unserious idea, and the two are not in conflict.
A practical note on the catalogue. Seventeen studio albums is a lot for a band with one subject, and the ordering matters less than usual: any record from the last twenty years will tell you what the band currently sound like, and the three from the 1980s are the ones that belong in a history of this genre. Everything in between is for people who have already decided.
Sources and notes
Years and labels refer to original pressings. Line up details follow the band's published accounts.
