Interview with TANKARD

Interview questions by Tomek/Nevermore and Marcin “Wildfire” Olejniczak, Pure Metal magazine (Poland)

Answers by: Andreas Geremia

Photo: Tankard

Pure Metal: Hi Andreas... Here Tomek and Marcin from the Pure Metal Magazine from Poland...

Andreas Geremia: Hello Tomasz! Hello Marcin! I’m very sorry for the delay, but i have a lot to work at the moment, but here we go! thanx for your support!

PM: I’d like to congratulate you on the new, great album. You’re back in shape after regressing a bit on the kinda weaker ‘Volume XIV’?

Andreas: First of all thanx a lot for the congratulations! I still think that the vollume 14 album is not weaker than the new one, but the sound is much heavier on the new one, but still very transparent!

PM: It’s your fifteenth album already... that’s a great number after 30 years of career. Looks like you release an album every other year. Workaholics, huh? How come that the greats of metal (i.e. Metallica, Slayer, Testament) record so rarely and you, since quite some years, regularly dose us with new, awesome albums?

Andreas: I think we really can’t compare us with the great bands, so I think it’s normal for a band like Tankard to release an album every two years! As we still have a lot of fun to play that kind of music, we still love to write new songs. If you think they are awesome thanx a lot, we just try to do our best!

PM: It’s your first album under Nuclear Blast. Why did you leave AFM records and choose Nuclear Blast?

Andreas: The record contract with AFM was over and Nuclear Blast made us a good offer, that’s all. They really put a lot of power into the band, especially promotion, so we are really satisfied with Nuclear Blast. We hit the German official charts on place 32, so this was the biggest success for the band ever concerning the charts.

PM: I must compliment you on the sound of the new album. Clear and apparently heavier than ‘Volume XIV’. It’s a step in a good direction I think...
Andreas: As I told you before I think now we found a good combination of a transparent and a really heavy sound, I agree with you it’s heavier than on volume 14, it really goes into the right direction!

PM: Why did you change the producer?

Andreas: Now we did the second album with Michael Mainx , the albums before we worked together with Andy Classen, we were really satisfied with him, but we just wanted to try something new so we changed, maybe the next album we gonna work together with somebody else, who knows?

PM: How’s the work with Michael Maxin? He recorded the acoustic guitars to ‘Son of the Fridge’ and ‘Running on Fumes’. Did he contribute any other ideas?

Andreas: Her really kicks us ass and we had a lot of work especially with the vocals. Michael always has a lot of good ideas; we try a lot in the studio. The songs are ready when we enter the studio, but we always do some little changes during the recordings, so we changed a little bit the chorus for “Not one day dead” for example!

PM: On your new album there’s a song with Doro, called ‘The Metal Lady Boy’. Where did the idea of collaborating with Doro come from?

Andreas: As I am a big Doro fan since many years visited a concert of her in last December! She saw me in the audience I had to go on stage to sing “All we are” together with her. Later on we met in the backstage room and the idea came into my head that Doro could join us on our new album. I said to her that we gonna have a love song on the new, I sent her the demo version and she liked the song very much! So finally she did it in a studio near to her living place and I think it really fits!

PM: Is the story told by the lyrics based on real events? In other words - did you guys really go to Thailand, grab some chicks after the gig, and in the morning it turned out that, you know... they have something dangling down there? Apparently it’s a pretty common thing there...

Andreas: The idea of the song was born when we played the very first time in Thailand last year and stood there for some days for vacation! There were a lot of nice girls, but you never know it’s a man or woman, very strange. So I can’t tell honestly if it happened to one of us to wake up in a false bed... hahaha.

PM: Why did you use a Spanish word in the album title? I checked, ‘cerveza’ means ‘beer’... where did that interesting and funny title of an idea come from – ‘A Girl Called Cerveza’? Another real-event based story? Did some girl give you a rough time?

Andreas: This was a joke of our bass player frank back in 2007 when we visited the very first time South America. So our manager buffo kept this nonsense in his mind and when we talked about the next album title he remembered that and we all thought that this would be a cool album title that really fits to tankard!

PM: You dedicated the album to Ralf Rösner. Who was your friend?

Andreas: Ralf was a very good friend of mine, he had a great tankard tattoo and he died in April this year! I will never forget him, rest in peace my friend!

PM: Do you have a garden of your own? Do you grow magnolia in it? :)))

Andreas: No, I don’t have a garden; I’m not a nature boy anyway. The lyrics of metal magnolia are about the relationship between man and woman, a very serious one. So the title has nothing to do with a garden and flowers.

PM: Are you turned on by women in high heels? Female feet? I really like the wordplay ‘Sexy Feet Under’.

Andreas: I really love female feet and I’m a real fetishist, so we have to write a song about that topic! As Tankard really like to play with words this title really fits to us I think!

PM: The bulk of your music is based on very fast and aggressive compositions, whose simplicity and expression lies in the verse-chorus structure... How come you always record songs sticking to that kind of structure, used and abused ad nauseam by everyone and their dog and don’t get bored by it?

Andreas: We never think about how an album should sound before we start to write new songs, they just come straight from the heart. Personally I really like catchy refrains you can remember, so we try to have also catchy refrains with Tankard. As the songs have different titles I think nobody really gets bored, although the music is always the same hahahaha……to be serious: I think we have an special style but a lot of different songs!

PM: Andreas - in some of the more aggressive parts you keep sounding closer and closer to Kreator’s own Mille! Wouldn’t it be fun if you played together and you sang some of Kreator’s songs and Mille some of your songs?

Andreas: As I am a big Kreator-Fan I think this is a good idea, I gonna talk with Mille about that when I gonna see him the next time!

PM: Many fans perceive you as a humour band - they say, „Oh, look, it’s those funny German beer guys“. And they’re not all that wrong, that’s the image you chose for yourselves after all... But Tankard isn’t all about humour, its also solid music and serious topics, you don’t only sing about beer. You also sing about society, politics. Will the new album also contain some serious songs with a message?

Andreas: Of course it will contain some serious stuff! We always try to do a good mixture of funny and serious stuff but first of all we have a lot of fun to play that kind of music, that is the main aspect with Tankard!

PM: In the past you dedicated one of your songs to Princess Diana, on ‘Thirsty’ there was a song about Josef Fritzl. Is ‘Rapid Fire’ also about someone in particular? Muammar al-Kaddafi, Kim Jong-un?

Andreas: This song is about a dictator that don’t understand why the people in his country struggling for liberty and democracy. Of course all the things happen in the Arabian world at the moment influenced us!

PM: What do you think about such dictatorships? We live in the 21st century, and yet some of the heads of state behave as if their nations and countries were their own property.

Andreas: I really think there will be not one of these idiots left one day, hopefully I’m still alive to see that!

PM: In ‘Witchhunt 2.0’ you tackle the rather serious topic of Internet’s bad influence on people - it’s not just an addiction now, but also a silent killer, capable of bringing down some of the weaker specimens. Not so long ago we had a movie release, ‘Sala Samobójców’ (‘Suicide Room’) which also tackles the problem. Do you care about what they say about you online?

Andreas: We really hate when people talking bullshit about somebody in an anonymous way. When somebody has to say something he has to do this right in my face.  Personally I don’t really take care what people talking about me in the Internet, but sometimes I think it’s really dangerous to kill somebody’s reputation!

PM: Your cover art is always full of humour. Do you still use Sebastian Kruger’s works?

Andreas: A student of Sebastian Krüger does the cover of our new album, Mr. Krüger now lives in the USA and we lost a little bit the contact to him! But I really love the new artwork; it’s really like the style of Sebastian Krüger!

PM: You have an intriguing graphic design - under your photos and birth dates there are also your offences. Did any of you ever get punished for being under the influence? Or public peeing, anything of the sort?

Andreas: No of course not, we are total serious people... hahaha.

PM: Where did you record the clip for the title track? Who is that cute black girl? A hired model or a friend of the band maybe?

Andreas: We choose the title track because we wanted to have a funny clip and the story of the title track is very crazy. The girl is the girlfriend of a guy working for our label, so we really know her before!

PM: ‘Son of a Fridge’ begins like a ballad, but then returns to normal - the song gets fast and loud. Weren’t you ever tempted to record an actual ballad? Even if just for fun.

Andreas: We don’t really think so much before we start with the song writing, so the songs really come straight from the hard. So maybe one day we will do a song ling “Atomic Twilight” again, we will see.

PM: Let me guess: because of their catchiness, we can expect ‘Rapid Fire’ and the title track to enter your set list permanently, right?

Andreas: We gonna try to play that song in near future, at the moment we start with “Zombie Attack”, but we gonna change that from time to time!

PM: How are you going to celebrate your beautiful, even anniversary? You know that the Americans from Helstar are also celebrating their 30 years this year? How about a concert together? Maybe there would be a bigger chance for that if you both were still under the same label (AFM).

Andreas: I really love Helstar and I think this would be awesome to play together again. But I don’t really know if they come over to Europe for a couple of shows. We gonna celebrate our birthday after our show in our hometown city Frankfurt on October 13th. We ganna have a little party in the Metal Pub “Speak Easy”.

PM: A musical summary of your career seems to be the song ‘No One Day Dead (But Mad One Day)’. You keep on playing, you found your way. What do you think about the bands that fell apart years before, but keep returning in the same ‘original’ line-ups for a few concerts at a time? Honest or for money?

Andreas: I don’t want to talk about other bands; everybody can do what he wants to do. I just can talk for Tankard, so we are very proud never to give up and still to be here, especially when we went through hard time in the middle until the end of the nineties, when thrash Metal was not very popular!

PM: In the beginning of 2012 you appeared at 70.000 Tons of Metal in Miami. How do you remember it?

Andreas: It was really a big party, metal from 10 am in the morning until 4 am in the next morning. I watched a lot of bands and met many cool people. It was a big party for 4 days and we really had a good time!

PM: The fans who got your limited version CD can watch the whole gig recorded with a camera, because it’s added as a bonus DVD. Do you think that today it’s necessary to add such bonuses to make them buy the album? How much is it the band’s decision, and how much the label’s?

Andreas: Nowadays it’s normal to release different versions of an album, so we decided together with the label to put this concert on the DVD. It’s somehow like a bootleg and if the fans don’t want to spend 1 euro more for that they can get the normal version!

PM: Why are the bonus DVD interviews only in German? Didn’t you have time to translate them?

Andreas: We didn’t really had the time for translation, but the next we gonna do something in English I promise you!

PM: You’re a four-piece band. Do you also meet in private? Do you drink together, watch football games? Does the band allow you to live from music, or do you have jobs and Tankard is just a distraction and a fun activity?

Andreas: We all have regular jobs and the other guys all have a family. So we spend all our free time in activities of the band, but sometimes we meet to go to a football game or join a party together.

PM: Do you keep in touch with ex-Tankard members? From what I see, Andreas Bulgaropulos helps you with the lyrics sometimes...

Andreas: We have a very good contact to Andy Bulgaropulos, he really helps us with the lyrics, to the other farmer members we lost the contact over the years, so I can’t really tell you what they are doing at the moment.

PM: Apparently you’re in Tankard since it’s beginning, 1982. When you founded the band, you were in your teens, still going to school. You played bass back then and only switched to vocals later. Do you still play bass sometimes?

Andreas: No I really can’t play bass. Frank and me started together to learn playing bass and frank was totally motivated comparing to me, so we just switched the roles, I think this was a good decision looking backwards!

PM: Do you remember when back in school days, during your first gig, you poured beer into milk boxes?

Andreas: The first show now is 29 years back and I really can’t remember, but it’s really funny to watch the old pics.

PM: Remember any other funny stories?

Andreas: There were a lot of funny stories, when we played once in Dublin they didn’t let us in the club for our own after show-party, because the say we were too drunk, very strange... hahaha

PM: What about your memories from gigs in Poland? What did you remember from those two concerts in 2009? Was the beer good? :)

Andreas: The beer was very good, everything was well organized and the fans were really crazy, we really would love to come back one day!

PM: Lemmy endorses the Motorhead wine, Accept just released their own brand called ‘Wolfsblut’. Ever thought of releasing your own beer? The can design is in the album inlay already.

Andreas: We try to speak with some breweries and there will be tankard-beer one day. The problem is that Tankard is not as big as the other bands you mentioned, but we gonna work on it!

PM: How do you like the two most media-anticipated albums from Testament and Overkill?

Andreas: I like both albums very much, especially the Overkill album. I gonna visit their

shows for sure when they come back on tour!

PM: How’s Eintracht Frankfurt? Back in 1st Bundesliga, winning game after game... so far you have reasons to be happy, the Eintracht team is playing great! Probably going to land in the middle of the table this year...

Andreas: At the moment it looks very good and they play a very good offensive football. It makes fun to watch them, I think in the end we will be in the midfield, but I’m ready for a surprise of course!

PM: During each game at the Eintracht stadium appears an eagle. Ever seen it live? It’s a beautiful, living symbol of your club.

Andreas: Yes I saw the eagle live once in my live when we played our Eintracht-song “Schwarz-Weiß wie Schnee” before the cup final against Bayern München in Berlin in 2006. The eagle crapped in my hair that was very funny!

PM: Thanks for your time and the interview!

Andreas: Thankx! Stay heavy...