More Info →Tank Farm's Disturbing Sounds

Description: This image was taken for a story that ran in The Manawatu Evening Standard on 25th July 1990.

"Tank Farm were not seriously writing their own songs until they met Chris Knox one night at Massey University. "We'd basically started out as a covers band, doing all the usual neo-gothic stuff like The Cure, and we also used to do Knox's Pull Down the Shades, says vocalist Bruce Heyder. "Then we met him at Massey, and he told us we should get off our butts and write some original music.

Since then, that's what we've been doing." Tank Farm have been playing around Palmerston North for about a year at venues such as Super Liquor Man and Creative Sounds. The band has recently had their song Angst -- recorded at the Stomach -- on the Radio Massey top ten, and hope to follow that up with their new one, Rainy Day Funeral.

They've written 15 songs so far, and support keeps growing with each performance. Heyder describes the sound as "disturbing guitar pop." "Graeme (Galyer) is a bit of a feed-back, guitar-noise expert, so we've always had this thread running through our music. We don't do it on purpose, it just ends up sounding disturbing."

Lyrically Herder and co-vocalist Bob Naylor share the songwriting duties, working from the unique bass-lines of Lon Teal. Often a dark message lies hidden behind the melody. "When we wrote Angst, it was basically about the 'strike a pose' type of nightclub women.

The latest, Rainy Day Funeral, is about a drug addict." Although they started out as goths, Heyder says the band is not locked into the negative moods explored by the Sisters of Mercy or Bauhaus. "We're not the Cure clones, we listen to all sorts of music. My main inspiration is Kiwi music, whereas our drummer John Worsley is heavily into rap and metal."

A unique Tank Farm feature is the two vocalists out front. That came about when Heyder was asked to quest at a Five-bands-for-five-bucks gig one night. "They asked me to come along and sing for them, and half a bottle of gin later, I was there." Tank Farm's next gig is likely to be on-campus in the new term, possibly in conjunction with Room 101. Meanwhile, listen for Rainy Day Funeral on Radio Massey."