Headbangers India recently caught up with Andreas “Gerre” Geremia, frontman for Germany's legendary thrashers Tankard. An excerpt from the career-spanning interview is available below:

HB: Tankard has played a lot over the world. What has been your best touring experience and atmosphere?

Gerre: "The craziest fans are definitely in Colombia; South America in general. But of course, we love playing all over the world. The metal community is the same everywhere you go – it is a brotherhood. No one cares if you are black or white, thin or fat; the metal community is the same. It is a really atmosphere thing all over the world. We are all one. We still have a lot of countries left to go to, so we need to do a lot more touring in the next 32 years!"

HB: Growing up in the 80s and 90s with bands like Kreator, Sodom, even the Scorpions, how did Tankard differentiate themselves from the other metal bands in the region?

Gerre: "We keep making great metal! That’s all! We called our second demo Alcoholic Metal just for fun because at that point, there were so many subgenres emerging all over the world – speed metal, black metal, glam metal etc. We created a new genre called alcoholic metal but we continued the trend with our other albums Chemical Invasion and The Morning After. It was quite new at that point to combine thrash metal with a lot of fun, and that’s what made a difference. We’ve never changed our style (except for one melodic album but that stayed true to Tankard’s sound) and we’ve also never split up, never taken a break or had a reunion. We’ve played through the good times and the hard times especially in the 90s, when thrash metal wasn’t very popular. You can see it in our fans at our live shows as well – a lot of older people who have aged with us, and a lot of younger people who are getting introduced to metal."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Tankard recently announced a special collaboration for their next video, "Fooled By Your Guts". The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia has spent the past 13 weeks working on a video for the first single from the new album, R.I.B. (Rest In Beer) - and the result is a hilarious fully animated video!

Producers Aaron McLoughlin & Simon Norton spent around 3000 working hours with their team to create the video, which will be premiered online on June 23th.

Until then, the band is teasing fans with a Making Of the video, which includes teaser clips from the video and background info from the producers, Cameron Jones & Nick Simpson:

Tankard will issue their new album, R.I.B., on June 20th via Nuclear Blast. Taking inspiration from the motto “never change a winning team”, the guys did the recording again with producer Michael Mainx (D-A-D, Disbelief), who also produced the last two albums.

Tankard will play the official album release show at Metalfest Lorely (June 19th – 21st) and do an exclusive signing session.

R.I.B. tracklisting:

"War Cry"
"Fooled By Your Guts"
"R.I.B. (Rest In Beer)"
"Riders Of The Doom"
"Hope Can’t Die"
"No One Hit Wonder"
"Breakfast for Champions"
"Enemy Of Order"
"Clockwise To Deadline"

"The Party Ain’t Over ‘Til We Say So'

Trailer:

Track-by-track videos:

"Fooled By Your Guts":