Tankard is a German Thrash metal band founded in 1982. Inventors of the "Alcoholic Metal"-genre. The band chose their name after looking through a dictonary and seeing a word defined as "beer mug". Tankard were formed by three classmates, Andreas "Gerre" Geremia, Axel Katzmann and Frank Thorwarth. At the time, the band was known as Vortex and Avenger until the current name of Tankard was discovered by the band in a dictionary. Their first song written was called "Ray Death"