Raise your steins, fellow Metal drunkards! I propose a hearty toast to TANKARD, those wild German veterans of alcoholic Thrash Metal who have just released their fifteenth album in thirty years. While I'm sure blackouts are inevitable when you're partying with these guys, the members of TANKARD have still never lost their figurative vision when it comes to writing music. They have a pleasurable time writing songs about beer and resulting antics at after parties while spiking each song with killer thrash grooves. What makes this album unique is its greater tendency to lean towards a traditional Heavy Metal style. In other words, TANKARD's songs are more subject to slower hard-hitting rhythms, melodic vocals, and very structured song style.  Depending on your mood, this could make you bored or make you happily surprised

Songs such as "Master of Farces" and "Not One Day Dead (But One Day Mad)" will transport you back to Germany's Ruhr District in the 1980s, the ultimate European hot spot for thrash that gets the blood instantly boiling.  Songs like "Metal Magnolia" and "Rapid Fire (A Tyrant's Elegy)" also contains some retro Thrash grooves; there are some subtle differences in the steadiness and catchiness of Andreas Gutjahr guitar work and in the greater melodic workings of Andreas Geremia's vocal range.

The title track was as silly as I expected; yet I took the musical quality incredibly seriously. In this way, I would lightly compare this band to SYSTEM OF A DOWN.  While TANKARDwill never be known for putting out politically challenging songs, their compositions are hard-hitting while these lyrics can really be just downright silly (case and point SoaD's "ChicnStu").  I admired the fierceness and humor in all of Tankard's tracks, and it came as a pleasant surprise to me as I heard the legendary Doro Pesch join this theatre of Metal peculiarity in the song  "Metal Lady Boy."  (Note: my feelings for this song were quite mixed because it is just such a twisted and silly song.  But come on.  We're talking about Doro here.)

Even after producing fifteen albums and staying together for thirty years, TANKARD continues to attack with all the creative force they have. And it worked. So party on and raise a toast to one of the greatest thrash metal bands that has continued to produce wonderfully catchy tunes. If your head isn't hurting from how much you drank yourself under the table, it will be hurting from how loud you blasted this album.

Please, I beg you; do a refill to this mighty tankard in my hands. I don't need catering or any kind of drug. I just want my precious liquid at my side; I want to feel the yellow fluid run through my throat straight into the darkest place of the liver. Believe me that I am no poet, though I came up with a few lines aside from the first one, when it comes to alcohol songs, but I think that TANKARD, the veteran Thrash Metal band from Germany, can be awarded as professors in that department. As long as there is beer running through the world's streets, bars and the refineries that manufacture them, TANKARD will forever live because there is nothing more glorious than Metal and beer. Less than two years after their great album of "Vol(l)ume 14", the old school veterans come up with a brand new release under the name of "A Girl Called Cerveza", once again produced in their same wine cellar of theirs. Yes she is trying to fool and cheat you out of your kegs, mugs and everything that is connected to your beer storage, so you would better watch your alcoholic belongings. Furthermore, TANKARD switched labels from their local label of AFM Records to the other side of the street to the main offices of Nuclear Blast Records.

Right after I pushed the play button in my Winamp, I had high hopes to once again receive an album that would outrun "The Beauty And The Beer" of 2006, a TANKARD album that truly left a huge impression on me and I think that it is one of the best offering of the band to date. However, once again I didn't get what I wanted so much as the "A Girl Called Cerveza" wasn't close to the success of "The Beauty And The Beer". On the other hand, I wasn't disappointed at all of this current material. Unlike the old Thrash ventures that have been a part of the bands bread and butter for the last three decades, this release, in general of course, felt a little more melodic and customary than its early counterparts. Though it was probably none intentional, there were moments where the album felt more of the 80s Heavy Metal vibe, mostly inspired by British Metal al'a IRON MAIDEN. The Heavy Metal impact, entrusted by a few great harmonies, melodies and an amazing opening verse of "Rapid Fire (A Tyrant's Elegy)", that sent me back to IRON MAIDEN's "Killers", might not be that strong as I suggested but who knows maybe it is a start, not that the band's Thrash efforts have been crumbling or something but an additional a flavour can always help a product become a winner. "A Girl Called Cervesa", "Son Of A Fridge", "Rapid Fire (A Tyrant's Elegy)"and even the solid "The Metal Lady Boy" (With a special guest vocals by Doro Pesch) are a run through the more traditional end of the band, amazing 80s oriented material. Man, I just couldn't have enough with those amazing guitar solos.

Nonetheless, on the whole, TANKARD is still a German Thrash Metal band, not as blissful as the holy triplet of DESTRUCTION, KREATOR and SODOM, but a survivor of the 90s regime where Thrash Metal became a part of myths and legends that told the tale of the lost 80s path only to succumb to the pitiful hands of the Alternative comfort zone. Their lyrics might be filled with humour, an unstoppable humour, licker, Thrash, Metal and their survival as an old icon from the glory days that endured the test of time, but these guys seem to have the energies to continue, no matter their age or whether their liver still exists, till death. Nothing can really stop them on the road to become the greatest drunken Thrash Metal band in existence. "Masters of Farces", "Running On Fumes", "Witchhunt 2.0" and "Not One Day Dead (But One Day Mad)", are the same old Thrash path that this band has been taking for years, but I promise you that it's a worthy ride through to pay for so go ahead and purchase this one.

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