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

I made it halfway. I get it.

Very interesting, but I don't think I'd listen to it more than once.

Oof I wanted to like this but found it a very tough to make it through. If I wanted to listen to German showtunes I'd turn on a dubbed version of Chicago.
In all seriousness I really did not enjoy most of this. But there were a few fleeting moments of intrigue die to her voice and the composition which were relatively moving. That and I appreciate that I hadn't heard this before. Still, though, not for me overall. 2/5

Favorite track(s): Mother's Hands, The Trenches

I'll respect it for pushing my boundaries. I'm not big on musical theater/cabaret to begin with, but it's made somewhat awkward on top by the translations. A few glimpses of interesting arrangement. Overall, pretty bizarre. I'll take my Dagmar with Henry Cow or Slapp Happy instead.

This is like your elderly, possibly mildly demented grossmutter decides to start singing show tunes. Whilst the voice is very good, the music is definitely not anything that I would choose to listen to and the songs, whilst witty at times, are mostly pretty rudimentary.
I do find it quite amazing that someone funded this to be produced in 1988, full of songs from the 1920s, and here we are being forced (admittedly of our own volition) to listen to it nearly 40 years later.
I would give this 1 star except her voice is really pretty good, shame about the rest of it.

Ok. I can appreciate something different. It's not for me though.

While I completely understand why people can’t stand this record I just find this to be one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever heard. Is it going anywhere near my all time favorite albums? No, absolutely the fuck not, but the avant garde musical style made its presence known to me. And when a record does that, it’s at the very least not something that I can call one of the worst albums of all time.

This is an educational album giving a flavour of what German cabaret sounded like during the World Wars and inter-war periods. The English translation of several tracks will annoy purists but it helps position the songs and drive home the meaning for English speaking listeners.

I don’t spend much time listening to musical theatre, what I’ve connected with has been contemporary and pop influenced, so this is a taste stretcher for me which I failed to connect with beyond taking a curious historical interest.

It’s amazing to think that the gap between today and this album’s release is only slightly less than that of this album’s release and the end of World War Two. How the world has changed!

Hated the vocals
Hated the instrumentals
Hated the album
Hated life listening to it

Interesting album. I think it deserves to be on this list based on the bizarreness of the whole concept alone. Some it is hard to listen to, but it gets extra points for its creativity and themes.

2.5/5.0: Mixed

this was a tough listen. I appreciate the idea but its not for me

Мне кажется Гитлер бы кайфовал под это

The Good: We get to play video-games!
The Bad: Seems these tanks are not digital…
The Ugly: How German doesn’t translate that well into English…

It’s been 2 months since this album was presented to me, and I can’t recall why I did not rate it sooner… oh wait, maybe because you can’t find the freakin’ album anywhere as a streaming option?

So today I decided to try my luck on the tube. and I found that someone does have the album, spit into side a and side b, I am guessing, listed.
What I was kind of misisng would be the sound of a needle dropping on a vinyl record, followed by some soft wobbly-scratch-noise…

I doubt that I will ever listen to this album again, yet I am glad that I did listen to it… why? Because of the constant flow of shit records which I have to listen to that don’t offer anything new… yes, I am referring to anything with the moniker “Dance, Electric, Tecno” to it.

Dagmar doesn’t hold back in freaking you out with her voice… it isn’t bad, it isn’t pretty either, but I guess that is part of the cabaret style that she is giving to us.

So, yes, something totally different, that I would never have listened to unless it would have been suggested to me via a 1001 album you need to hear before you die kind of thing… good for you Mr D, for once I will not want to punch you in the groin…

3*

wow that was really not my kind of music but it was worth listening to it and i mean LISTENING to it. War sucks. Lied Von Der Deutschen Mutter [Song of a German Mother] hits different.

Also to that one guy here that gave 1 star because this album is in german: r/USdefaultism

It helps to understand german, know Hans Eisler, kurt Tucholsky and Berthold Brecht and their importance. Most of the stars I give belong to them, they rock

Interesting but I couldn't finish it.

Tank Battles
I’m sure that there is an audience for 1930s German Marxist Cabaret songs that aren’t by Kurt Weil, sung with lyrics in English by a strident German musical theatre lady, but I don’t quite think I'm it. It obviously doesn’t help that it's a YouTube listen, but even if it was easier to access I’m still not sure I’d fall in love with it.

Having said that, I do admire its uniqueness, and I appreciate the artistic endeavour of showcasing a forgotten songwriter. Lyrically it is very interesting too, it makes a nice change of pace to hear songs about wheat harvests and welfare states, and something like Song of a German Mother is in fact very moving.

It's also for the most part very well recorded, the tone of the horns in particular is lovely and warm, and it feels like it is genuinely evocative of what I imagine Weimar Republic cabarets sounded like. Although occasionally it does belie the time period it was recorded, with the guitar at the start of The Rat Men (although it could have been The Perhaps Song, as its hard to know ithe YT sometimes)

However it boils down to a style of music I’m just not that keen on, a bit too oompah, a bit too musical theatre and it kind of puts me on edge, Bettellied in particular bothered me on that front.

Happy to file this under ‘Glad I listened but it's not really my cup of gluwein’. 2.
🪖🪖
Playlist submission: Song of a German Mother

I was not ready for this.

I do not know nearly enough about this genre to tell if this is a masterpiece, but both the arrangements and the lyrics seem fairly clunky. I think I would have preferred to hear this in german instead.

I challenge anyone to actually enjoy "Mother Beimleim".

Not for me

I love a show tune, I took A-level German and I gave the Young Gods album four stars because I liked that there was an oompah/Kurt Weil-ish tinge to their industrial metal. So I feel like I should be the prime target for this but somehow I can’t see myself listening to it again.