Review Summary: Pure fun
What Man-o-War is to heavy metal, Tankard is to thrash (apparently I'm not the only one who has that opinion). Parody that never has to sacrifice making good music for a laugh. They write songs about beer, thrashing, beer, horror movies, and beer! While maybe they don't and never did anything to push the genre forward, they worked so well within thrash that it is pretty hard to fault them for it. They knew what they wanted to do and they did it. This is more or less just another album in their discography, but it's my favorite and thus here it is. Worth mentioning, this album came out in the year of thrash. Yet another great album from '86.
Some albums are hard to explain. I was working on a review for Jesus Lizard's Goat but ended up scrapping it because I really just couldn't figure out what to say. Thankfully, Tankard has made it really easy. Tankard is thrash metal turned up to 11. Fast and simple riffs and solos that are faster and also pretty simple. The drums hit hard and fast just like the riffs. While this clearly isn't anything innovative, like I said they do it so well and have so much fun doing it it's super entertaining. Production wise, I think the album came out lighter than intended, but I really think it helps the music match the fun lyrics. Not to say this album isn't heavy, it just isn't the soul crushing heaviness of other competing thrash bands. This may be what really helps set the band apart, even musically fun comes before anything.
Lyrically, the album is an odd kind of parody. It clearly is parody, but it isn't parody that is meant to be funny, it's meant to be fun. I know that's a bit weird, it's something you kinda have to hear to understand. Vocals here though are GREAT. Gerre has this odd singing bark voice that is just perfect for thrash. He has more energy than a preschool filled with kids who just had 3 Hershey bars too. While the music is catchy and fun, the vocals are what get stuck in your head and really make this album what it is.
As for the bad, well like I said this band does one thing. Despite how well they do it, it is very one dimensional. They had the good sense to keep the album to a brisk 37 minutes so it isn't long enough to really become a huge problem, but it does really hurt the last 10 minutes or so even if the song quality doesn't drop. Speaking of song quality, there are few moments that really stand out as super great. The song "(Empty) Tankard" is probably the only truly great moment here. The other songs are really good, but nothing worth talking about outside the context of the album.
Basically, this is a collection of really good but not great thrash songs. It tends to get boring at the end, but for the most part the pure fun of the songs is enough to keep things working. While I really can only recommend it to thrash fans, it really is something all thrash fans should listen to.
