Interview with Gerre of Tankard: If there is a possibility, we would love to join The Big Teutonic Four tour!

25/07/2022 Video Interviews Share

Minions! We were honored to interview the king of beer, Gerre of Tankard! This is our 2^nd time to interview him, and this time we did it at Exit Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia.

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We started the conversation with Tankard’s first show in Serbia, in 2006. He recalled that the crowd was really “enthusiastic”. Then, we moved on to the new Tankard album – Pavlov’s Dawgs. When asked whether there’s some concept behind the album he said: “We don’t have any concept since 40 years (Laughs). That is not really a concept. It’s like always, we try to do a good mixture of funny stuff and very serious lyrics and we don’t sit together and have a plan how the next album has to sound so we just begin to write songs and at the end we check out what the result is…At the moment, we are really satisfied with the result and the album will come out via Reaper Entertainment. So we went off of Nuclear Blast but this Florian Miltz, he is the owner of the Reaper Entertainment and he is our former promoter. He worked for Nuclear Blast so he is a good friend of ours and we are really looking forward to do a lot of promotion stuff and yeah, I hope that people are gonna like the new album”.

When asked how the album is going to sound like, Gerre said: Very different question (laughs). I would say it’s Tankard inside. I think we have some really fast songs on it but also with some melodic riff runs, choruses and, yeah, just check it out! What can I say? The best album that we ever did? It’s really a cliché. So, check it out, but there are no industrial influences or something like that. It’s thrash metal, heavy metal influences, I don’t know. Check it out.

We were also wondering whether there was a possibility of the Teutonic Big Four tour, with Sodom, Tankard, Kreator and Destruction. Gerre answered: “We’re playing out together in Mexico. At the festival. Yeah, it’s a little bit complicated because every band has its own plans, but if there’s a possibility, we would love to join it for sure.”

After that, we talked about the funny “Incredible Loudness” intro. “We never used that but we destroyed a rap song. We smashed the vinyl. Now we never use that. We did it once live, but back in 1986 or 1987. We also asked Gerre who the guy at Kings of Beer artwork is: “That was a good friend of mine but he died. Six years ago. He died. He was a good friend of mine.

We then switched the discussion to the stereotype of Tankard’s beer-only lyrics. “I mean, we created this image with albums like Chemical Invasion and The Morning After. It was our own fault. So nowadays, we have to live with that kind of image. And nowadays we do a lot of jokes about our own image. Yeah, sometimes it’s a little bit, it’s only reduced to this beer stuff. It’s 1000 things more behind it. But anyhow, it was our fault and I can live with that. Everything is good.

Right after, we turned our discussion toward more serious topics. With the song “Maniac Forces”, being as relevant as when it was writte in 1986, Gerre stated: “Nowadays we have a very dangerous situation. At the moment we don’t play that song but it’s back from the middle of the 80s when we had really the Cold War…When asked how dangerous that situation was, with 2 blocks occupying East and West Germany, Gerre said: “It was dangerous in the 80s and yeah, but finally everything went good and we will see what happens. We live in crazy times.

Then, we talked about West Berlin and the infamous Music Lab Studios, located near Checkpoint Charlie during the time when Berlin Wall was still around. This was the place where first 6 Tankard albums were recorded (Zombie Attack, Chemical Invasion, The Morning After, The Meaning of Life, Stone Cold Sober, Two-Faced) Gerre: It was like an island (laughs). It was very... city full of life, impulsive, the whole night party, yeah, it was very cool... I can remember the first albums we recorded…because my father worked for British airlines allowed to fly to West Berlin. It was Pan-Am for the US, Air France for France and British Airways for United Kingdom. It was really like a little island. But it did not really influence our lyrics. I wouldn’t say that.

In a song “Dancing on our Grave” there is a line that says “eco-revolution is the only solution”. Gerre explained: “Yeah, if you see nowadays what’s gonna happen, we gonna destroy this whole planet if we don’t change quickly some things…It will be worse I would say.

And the final question for the interview was, what is his favorite beer? Gerre replied: “Always the beer we get backstage because it’s for free”.

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00:00 Start

00:33 Belgrade show in 2006

01:21 New album – Pavlov’s Dawgs

03:40 Big Teutonic Four

04:02 Incredible Loudness intro

04:41 October Fest

05:12 Kings of Beer artwork

05:30 Beer-only lyrics

06:26 Maniac Forces

07:27 West Berlin and Music Lab Studios

08:37 Dancing on Our Grave lyrics

09:03 Favorite beer?

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