Tankard

The thrash metal band Tankard hails from Frankfurt, Germany, where the group formed in 1982. Vocalist Andreas Geremia, bassist Frank Thorwarth, drummer Oliver Werner, and guitarists Bernhard Rappric and Axel Katzmann comprised the band's original lineup, although Tankard had already reshuffled several of its members by the time Zombie Attack was released in 1986. Featuring songs like "Alcohol" and "(Empty) Tankard," the debut album introduced Tankard's combination of metal influences and beer-related lyrics. Subsequent releases like 1987's Chemical Invasion, 1988's The Morning After, 1990's The Meaning of Life, and 1992's Stone Cold Sober explored similar territory. Acclaimed within the metal community, those albums helped confirm Tankard's status as one of the "The Big Tour" of Teutonic thrash metal, a role the band shared with Kreator, Destruction, and Sodom. Lineup changes continued to occur, with Geremia and Thorwarth emerging as the band's longest-running members. Even so, Tankard remained a staple of German metal for decades, releasing five albums during the 2000s and another four — including 2017's One Foot in the Grave, which reached Number 26 on the German Albums chart — during the 2010s. After long partnerships with labels like Noise Records, AFM Records, and Nuclear Blast, Tankard partnered with a new label, Reaper Entertainment, for the release of Pavlov's Dawgs in 2022.