Tankhog

Tankhog grew out of a tight circle of young Vancouver musicians. Bassist Stephen Hamm and drummer Terry Russell had been a rhythm section since Chuck and the Fucks, a West Point Grey punk band, and stayed together through Slow and Ogre, a Spinal Tap-style heavy metal parody. Singer Bruce Wilson, who appears on the band’s records as Bruce Kane, was born and raised in the American South. His first band in Vancouver, TV Repairmen, included guitarist Shane Davis, Tom Anselmi, Mark Findler and Scott Chernov, most of them still in high school. They played at least five shows, two of them at Stalag 13 and one at Wilson’s parents’ moving sale, where his father talked the police into letting them finish their five-song set. Anselmi left to form Slow.

Slow became one of the most notorious bands in the city in the mid-1980s. Opening for the Cramps at the Thunderbird Arena, the group came on dressed as nurses and finished covered in a mix of fake blood and real pig’s blood. At Expo 86 the power was cut when the crowd got too excited, and Hamm answered by exposing himself. When Slow broke up, Anselmi and guitarist Christian Thorvaldson formed Copyright and signed with Geffen.

Wilson had moved to Boston, and when he came back he started a new band with Hamm, Russell and Davis. Guitarist David Mawhinney made it a five-piece, and Al Campbell became their manager. Wilson later recalled that the band’s name came from their youthful habit of obtaining nitrous oxide tanks from hospitals. Anyone who would not let go of one was told not to be such a tankhog, and the word stuck.

In 1990 the band put out a cassette of ‘Reptilian’ and ‘Tears’, mixed by Dave Ogilvie, the Skinny Puppy producer. Wilson wrote ‘Reptilian’ while reading Kafka and listening to Motörhead, borrowing from ‘Love Me Like A Reptile’ for a song about alienation. That fall Tankhog recorded House Of Beauty at Mushroom Studios with Ogilvie co-producing and Ken Marshall engineering, then mixed it at Little Mountain Sound. Both cassette songs went onto the album, which came out on Grant McDonagh’s revived Zulu Records label. Covering the Partridge Family’s ‘I Woke Up In Love This Morning’ was Russell’s idea, and McDonagh, a big Partridge Family fan, wanted it as the lead single. In the video the scars on Wilson’s chest are real. Many discographies date the album to 1992, although it was already out by November 1990.

Chris Wong met the band at its East End house in the fall of 1990, just before it left to open for Skinny Puppy on the Too Dark Park tour across North America. He found a pool game in progress, two big dogs and a porch sign that read “Proper Dress Required.” Hamm summed up the band for him in one line: “We just like to make fuckin’ tons of noise.” Skinny Puppy’s audiences were less welcoming. Wilson remembers the band’s show at the Ritz in New York, where Skinny Puppy played on November 16, 1990, as the most hostile crowd he ever faced. Fans screamed abuse and tried to climb the barricade, so Tankhog dropped its set and played Kiss and B.T.O. covers to provoke them further. He counted it among the best moments he ever had on stage. The band toured hard, and Hamm later felt the records never caught the power of the live shows.

In June 1991 Tankhog recorded Ministry’s ‘So What’ at Fir Street Studios with Vince Gatti. It took one side of The Mint Is A Terrible Thing To Taste, a green marbled 7-inch shared with Windwalker’s version of Ministry’s ‘Burning Inside’. The single was the first release in Mint Records’ MRS series. The following March the band went back to Fir Street with Gatti, now a four-piece without Mawhinney, to cut ‘The Freight Train Song’. Mint issued it as MRS-002 with Hugh Ellenwood’s ‘Jealous Trains’ on the flip side. Robynn Iwata drew the cover “with apologies to Tibor Gergely,” who illustrated the Little Golden Book Tootle.

Sub Pop handled American distribution for the band’s records. Campbell and Hamm had driven to Seattle to see Jonathan Poneman, who already knew Hamm, but sales were poor. Campbell felt Tankhog had the right sound at the right time and the bad luck to be based north of the border, with independent distribution limited and little crossover from Seattle’s booming music industry.

During the Music West festival in May 1993, Nettwerk Records held a barbecue in its parking lot on 2nd Avenue by the Granville Street Bridge. Tankhog rented a flatbed truck and a generator, pulled up, blocked traffic and played three songs before speeding back to East Vancouver. Wilson had spent the night before steaming the labels off beer bottles and replacing them with Tankhog labels, and roadie Christian Letnar handed them out to the crowd. The band had tipped off MuchMusic, so Terry David Mulligan was there with a camera crew, and Billboard reported the stunt in its festival coverage. That year Tankhog also sent out a promotional cassette pairing ‘The Falling Song’ with ‘The Freight Train Song’.

By Wilson’s count the band lasted about six years. Nobody made any money, and he has said a reunion would only be a pale imitation of something that belonged to its own time and place. Guitarist Kevin Rose also played in Tankhog at some point. Hamm went on to the Evaporators with Nardwuar the Human Serviette, led Canned Hamm and now performs as Theremin Man. Wilson lost several years to addiction and drifted away from music before returning in 2017 with Sunday Morning, a project with Hamm that drew comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Iggy Pop. He also sang as a guest during Slow’s ten-night reunion stand at the Penthouse, and in 2019 he was recording a second Sunday Morning album, Consequence Of Love, with producer Felix Fung.

In 2023 Wilson, Hamm and Russell were playing together again in Jibbernaut, a Vancouver punk band rounded out by guitarist Ford Pier, who had played keyboards in Tankhog. Hamm suggested the group in 2022, and Wilson brought in a batch of short songs that the four worked up together.

-Robert Williston