ALESTORM “No Grave But The Sea”
Napalm Records
Alestorm single-handedly invented the concept of “pirate metal”: an enthusiastic blend of power and folk metal, all with a pirate theme. It’s great to see them still following their path with this, their fifth album. To quote their press release “Alestorm have evolved into an international party machine … (who) sing stupid songs about getting drunk and stealing ships”
The words I would add to this self-review are “incredibly catchy”. It normally takes me a couple of listens to get into an album but I got into this on the first listen, singing along. If only I hadn’t been at the gym, and the track hadn’t been “Fucked with an anchor” it would have gone so much better…
I see that Alestorm have signed up to do the usual summer festival appearances, and I can just imagine being in a muddy field with hundreds of hairy people all bellowing this at the stage. All of the songs are made for (drunken) audience participation and have ridiculously easy to pick up choruses.
By the time that I’d listened to the whole album, I felt that I had had a pretty good introduction to piracy: I now know that “rum, beer, quests and mead: these are the things a pirate needs” and that when pirates have downtime they head to Mexico to party. There’s no let-up of pace throughout this frenetic romp through murder, drunkenness and plunder until you reach the final epic “Treasure Island” which is an anthemic summary of all that has gone before, culminating with some rather nice guitar.
There are several versions available of this release: including one with a rubber duck. Being Alestorm, this is of course no ordinary rubber duck. It is a pirate rubber duck. I can’t review the duck, as I’ve only seen the pictures, but it does look rather cute.
So, to summarise: amazingly catchy folk/power metal with a feel-good factor. Avast there, ye landlubbers, the pirates are coming!
https://www.facebook.com/alestormband/
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