Tank Battles: The Songs of Hanns Eisler / Panzerschlacht: Die Lieder von Hanns Eisler

Gott sei Dank ist es vorbei!"

I understand why this album is jarring for many listeners, especially if you're only listening to this in the context of the highly pop/rock inflected list. It takes a bit of work to shift your mode of listening if you want to enjoy this music, but I believe it's worth the effort. The compositions are zany and funny and terrifying and grievous. Also, Eisler was right about a lotta shit and it feels nice to have a dose of absurdist modernist sanity.

Maybe the only album with “fennec” in the lyrics

The actual album not available so can't comment on that. I listened to 'most popular ' on Spotify for the artist. If you forced me to guess what non-English language this was penned in I would have definitely said German.

This was cool and I’m glad I heard it, but I think this had a little more value to me as a history lesson on who Hanns Eisner was. The orchestration was solid and the lyrics were definitely the best part. I just don’t think I will be coming back to this. Favorite songs were The Ballad Of The Sackslingers and Song Of A German Mother.

This wasn't objectionable to listen to. A little weird, and not something I'll ever be in the mood to listen to again, but I'm glad it's out there.

It's unfortunate that the Wikipedia article is so thin and I had to go on a scavenger hunt to find out the pretty interesting history of the music and composer.

⭐⭐.51

This was weirdly hypnotic. 1920s German Cabaret songs composed by a Marxist and with lyrics translated into English... it's hard to look away. 2.5 stars rounded down.

Bit difficult today because flying to Barcelona and it was only on YouTube. This was great though, very much up my alley. Cabaret music enthused with such sadness

Might be cool if you were actually involved in a tank battle while listening

I was completely unaware of this artist and am going in completely blind.

I wish I could have listened to this completely deaf.

But seriously though, I respect this list for including these avant garde selections... I just don't think this is something that one needs to listen to before one dies. And it's another case where the fact that this album isn't readily available to stream is an indicator of exactly how important this album actually is. I don't hate this, but I would not call this good.

Dagmar Krause has a beautiful voice, and it does fit in with the grand style of this music. Wikipedia says this is cabaret, and that sounds about right. It was interesting, certainly different.

From an objective view there are some very powerful songs on here, especially if one is willing to dig further into the German lyrics. Most definitely an interesting inclusion in terms of musical style and historical context.

From a subjective view, I am respectfully not built for this.

Standouts: Ballade von der belebenden Wirkung des Geldes (The Song of the Invigorating Impact of Cash) • Song of a German Mother • The Trenches (Hanns Eisler)

Suena bien, parece la banda sonora de Cabaret. No está en Tidal ni Spotify, así que ha tocado oírlo por YouTube Music. No me ha interesado mucho y no sé cual sería su relevancia en el momento de publicación o porqué acabó en esta lista de álbumes.

Impossible to 'rate' - one is not sure if you're rating Krause herself, Eisler-Brecht, or the instrumental backing - Tank Battles isn't so much acquired taste as it is a submission to a history lesson. There's nothing to get used to here: no one, I imagine, listens to this 'genre' on a regular basis. So the question becomes: what do you do w/ a record like it? Krause's vocals are impressive but not particularly memorable, there is a gathering sense of atmospherics, but I'm not immersed in a world, I understand the desire for historical interpretation, but I'm not thoroughly moved. Knowing that the album arrived a year before the Berlin Wall fell does add an interesting wrinkle, tho that makes me want to read more Brecht. As for Krause - meh.

I'm going to see Cabaret At The Kit Kat Club later this summer, and this is the sort of stuff I'm expecting.

It's altogether not at all bad, but there's a time and a place and that's either West End London 2026 or Berlin 1938.

Bizarrely, I ended up with an earworm of "Song Of A German Mother" all afternoon.

It may be amazing. Although the reviews suggest otherwise…

Sadly it’s not on Spotify, so it will remain something that I won’t have listened to before I die.

Wow, this was a weird one. Avant-garde German cabaret with Marxist themes translated to English? Honestly, I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. I kind of feel like Einsturzende Neubauten should have been the backing band on this one.

When she sang "This is not good, it's not good."... I really felt that.

Maybe this works in the original German, but the translation makes the lyrics pretty clunky and adds piles of campiness to listening experience. The version I listened to on YouTube had a few tracks that were in German and I preferred those to any of the English songs.

Too theatrical, hard to stand.

I made it halfway. I get it.