Tankard
Zombie Attack

THE REVIEW

Born in 1982 in Frankfurt am Main, a city tied to the stories of Heidi and Exumer, Tankard represent the quintessential alternative, secondary, beer-loving Thrash Metal band: they record for Noise, mistake Harris Jonhs for Peter Grant, have played the same musical genre for two decades, love cheetah-speed with a final leap, write serious lyrics with irony, semi-serious with irony, prosaic with irony, adore beer and bird feed (Ritchie Blackmore docet).

While other German thrash bands (Exumer + mascot possessed by fire) learn the sacred word of Slayer with some variation, Tankard in the mid-'80s manifest their punk attitude with the demo "Alcoholic Metal" and debut in 1986 with this "Zombie Attack" in its classic lineup: Andreas "Gerre" Geremia, Frank Thorwart, Axel Katzmann, Andy Bulgaropulos, and Oliver "Farewell To A Slut" Werner. The good news of this debut, released in the golden year of Thrash Metal, is not so much in the imitation or, at least, the awkward revisitation of certain thrash matrices of the time, whether Metallica or Slayer, but in chewing a song and digesting it ten times in the album, the song in question being "Strike Of The Beast" by Exodus, the thunderous closer of their debut "Bonded By Blood" released in 1985. The song is nothing more than a disastrous and simple riff launched at supersonic speed by drummer Tom Hunting, but the sound is that of a filthy thrash, raw yet engaging and evocative, so much so that guitarist Axel Katzmann uses it to compose eight songs while bassist Frank reworks it into two big tunes.

My analysis could be challenged soon, but if we look at the title track, we notice that the guitar phrasings are coarse, the drums are fired at full throttle without much regard for the pedals, not to mention Gerre's voice that lacks Paul Baloff's (R.I.P) charisma from the same Exodus but possesses the enthusiasm of a nineteen-year-old writing lyrics, certainly not as committed as Phil Rind's, but appropriate for partying and, after the storm, reflecting on the world around us.

In "Zombie Attack", Geremia repeatedly declaims the title, and the song is decent, quick, and with a Spartan riff: the zombies are not wandering in the cemetery but inside the peaceful homes of dear old Europe, this is the image that forms in my mind, not what the lyrics say. "Acid Death" starts the pilgrimage of spare riffs taken from Exodus but filled with emotional strength, let's all repeat together "Acid Deaaaath, Acid Deaaath" and terse, concise, and so effective solos arrive that we're already forced to rewrite the German thrash history. The sacred triad is enhanced, transforming into the imperial chariot Kreator-Sodom-Destruction-Tankard (bands on the bench Sabbat and Deathrow) and these last ones are playing one of the many concerts close to our home: try interviewing them, and you'll see that beneath the beer crate, there's a lot of humanity and knowledge of the world situation, without pretending to teach anything to anyone. Another strong point of the concerts is "Mercenary", equipped with a nail-ripping riff, like a clubpiece with a spring support that keeps pounding on an old wrecked car, until the pistons-solos are thrown into the air: "...they want to kill you, the mercenary comes to you and you have to run far away...watch out for the mercenary!...".

The evolution of European thrash also passes through Tankard, who come to stage fun with serious epigram as in "Maniac Forces": "... Russia and America accuse each other of having more bombs than the other, we live in an uncertain world, afraid of the start of World War III..."; after a palindrome mood - doom intro, the song bursts into the recurring riff "Strike Of the Beast" taken apart and reassembled, and we realize that the whole album will be like this, except for the Gang Green cover "Alcohol" which merges with the beer anthem "(Empty) Tankard": "...drinking and screwing all night...", a really lively program that does not contemplate demons or princes of darkness.
The second half of the album turns out to be less successful, and the songs begin to falter, the riffs lose the ironic appeal of the first part of the platter and don't scratch, the proclamation-rapture of "Chains" reveals itself quite stale ("...fight, fight back their aggressions, take up arms and defend yourself...kill, kill, the time has come..") whereas "Screaming Victims" stands over mediocrity with some initial play before the usual storm that is perpetrated by a poem ripped from the grooves of "Evil Invaders" by Razor. The two axes Katzmann and Bulgaropulos turn out to be oxymoronic, that is, effective but repetitive, while the rhythmic section fulfills its duty like a grinding machine. But what surprises is the voice of Andreas Geremia, with his blatant Teutonic diction that, coupled with his genuine aggressiveness, rises to a driving element of the album.

With this debut, Tankard positions themselves as the fourth force of German thrash and outplay the poor Wehrmacht on their own field, although at the time few would have thought that, instead, in hindsight, we find them in splendid form to this day. "Zombie Attack" is a decent debut, not indispensable, but if we want to get closer to the masterpiece "The Morning After", we must go through this alcoholic thrash path that does not shine in monetized charts but in heavy festivals, where Gerre and company stage their thrash resistant to the wear of time.