The poor woman at work didn’t quite know how to take it last Friday.
It was an innocent question. “you got any gigs this weekend?” She’d asked cheerily. Only to be told: “yes I’m going to see a folk band singing sea shanties tonight.” Even then I’m not sure she believed me, so helpfully I sent her a video of one of them. Her response: “It was better than I expected.”
And continuing the nautical theme, is Alestorm. I’m not sure how you would explain Christopher Bowes and the crew to anyone, how do you tell anyone about pirate metal? Hell, I love pirate metal, have done for years, and even I’m not sure how to write about this band.
Here’s what I do know. These five tracks are the follow up, to the mighty “Seventh Rum” album, and look, if you like the band before, you still like this. That’s kind of how it goes.
“Voyage of the Dead Marauder” sees Patty Gurdy join in with some hurdy gurdy and vocals, there is a real feeling above all, that Alestorm are just really, really good at this.
“Uzbekistan” is ready for a mosh pit, and adds some eastern flavours to its historical inaccuracies, while “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” is a magnificent tale, it’s got a proper plot and everything. Social commentary and a chorus that many would kill for. It’s everything you’d want from such an endeavour.
In the old days of CD singles, you would have played those three to death. The remaining couple, would have been spread across the formats and probably skipped. “Sea Shanty 2” Is instrumental and sort of fun, while “Cock” sounds exactly like you think a song called that by this band will sound. The sort of people that like The Inbetweeners may well enjoy this. Enough said?
But, as ever with Alestorm, you take the full package. For all the controversy, and maybe for the fact that you still can’t believe that they’ve managed to drag this idea out for as long as they have. Yet when they get it right, as they do on the first trio of songs on “Voyage of the Dead Marauder”, they are quite superb.
Rating 8/10
