Rock Overdose and John Koutsosimos have spoken to Olaf Zissel, drummer of German thrash metallers TANKARD, and you may read about band's latest news, in the interview below...
Rock Overdose: Hello, we are glad to have Tankard in RockOverdose.gr and we welcome you! How are you?
Olaf: Hi here is Olaf, the drummer from the bunch of Hippies and I can tell you that we are all well.
Just a little bit tired from the work on the new album for the last few weeks.
Rock Overdose: How is going the new album, everything is finished?
Olaf: The recordings are finished and the final mix will also be finished in these days. It will be out on July 27 and is entitled “A Girl Called Cerveza”.
Rock Overdose: Give us an idea of the new beer sorry I mean of the new album. Will it be different from the previous albums?
Olaf: Ice cold unfiltered German thrash with a big heavy metal touch and somehow.. funny lyrics.
There are no big changes in the way we create a new album so you won’t see many differences to the previous ones. It’s produced by Michael Mainx again who also did our last album. For the first time ever we did the recordings in our home town in the Studio23 and a well known female metal voice is appearing on the album. Last but not least it will be promoted by Nuclear Blast now where we signed a new contract a couple of weeks ago after the deal with AFM was running out.
Rock Overdose: Why all this secrecy behind the revelation of the artwork? Do you like to do surprises to others?
Olaf: I’m just the drummer from the bunch of clowns so I can only guess that it is for some promotional reasons. If you like to watch the complete cover you have to return to the page frequently while mysteriously beer cans will be removed from the picture. My second theory is quiet simple. Maybe it’s not finished behind the cans? Who knows?
Rock Overdose: After the release of the album, are you going to be on stage for the promotion of it?
Olaf: We are touring the whole year as we do it the since the last few albums but we mostly play on weekends. We all have regular jobs so we can’t do a promo tour for weeks. But we are fine with that cause we still have enough people who like to see us in every corner of the world.
Rock Overdose: What happened and your scheduled appearance in Greece (Thessaloniki) with Obituary, Heathen and Exodus was canceled?
Olaf: We don’t know the exact reasons why these shows were canceled but I think it was a little way too
expensive to fly all these Bands in for just two shows. Maybe the risk was too high for
the promoter to end up in the red after this.
Rock Overdose: In a box there can be almost 20 frozen beers. Will Tankard reach 20 albums? Or you will record till the the time you say "now it's time to stop it"?
Olaf: We don’t have a masterplan for this. We will do this as long as we have fun and actually there is a lot of fun.
In Germany we also have boxes for 24 beers and if this is not enough we have to create some beer box extensions.
Rock Overdose: Tell us your experience from your moments in 70.000 tons of metal.
Olaf: We had a great time on the cruiseship with all the crazy metal heads from all over the world. Our second show was at 4AM in the morning on the pool deck and we thought that everybody is sleeping at this time but we still had a good crowd on the deck and the party afterwards ended up in the Karaoke Bar at 9 in the morning.
Rock Overdose: Are you satisfied with the whole career of Tankard or still there is something that you regret for?
Olaf: Sometimes if we have to sit in the Van for 12 or 14 hours we ask our self’s why are we doing this but if we are out on stage at night we are satisfied with the situation and the possibility to play our music in front of our fans. Traveling around the world is always some kind of adventure and we like these kind of trips through the heavy metal world.
Rock Overdose: Have you ever left a concert in the middle of it because you consumed to much beer?
Olaf: No but we had some really bad performances for that reason so we decided to make some kind of “Beer Rule” that says that we start to drink alcohol just two hours before show time and since that we do much better on stage than before.
Rock Overdose: With which band would you like to do a concert?
Olaf: It’s always funny to play with the German thrash veterans and talk about the good old days but I can’t say that there is a special Band I have to join on Tour. Maybe cause my favorites are not only from the Metal corner but also different kinds of music. Danko Jones for example or Clutch or June Tabor but she is from a different dimension so maybe she is not existing for real??
Rock Overdose: Now, the most difficult question. Which is your favorite Tankard album and why? I'm not asking for the worst, I don't think you have any.
Olaf: Easy for me to say that it’s “The Tankard” album. It was my first with Tankard
since I joined the Band in 1994 and there are a few songs that I wrote on it and that was a complete
new experience for me back in these days. Before that I was playing around with some local Metal
or Punk Bands but never made it to record a album under professional terms.
Rock Overdose: It was honor to do this interview with you, I wish you the best for you and Tankard and of course have a beer! You can finish this interview with any message to the Greek fans of Tankard....
Olaf: Hi everybody, watch out for our new release and sorry that we don’t come over in June. Hope that we can do this later
on this year. Cheers !!!!
Comments
