Until about a couple of months ago I hadn't heard of Alestorm. Which isn't strange, seeing as metal is its own world only occasionally intersecting with the main body of rock music. I happened to see them live in the Lokerse Feesten festival in Belgium. I was there mostly to catch those 80's dinosaurs, Europe and -mainly- Scorpions, as well as Monster Magnet (who eventually cancelled). As luck would have it, Alestorm started playing just as I entered the festival grounds, and they were not only the best band of the night, they were the
most fun I've had in a concert for a very long time! Afterwards I went to the merchandise stand, which didn't have any CD's but did sell some pretty cool piratically-themed T-shirts. So I had to order their CD's online, starting with their latest "No Grave But The Sea". I remembered some titles from the concert, most strikingly "Fucked With An Anchor", You don't easily forget thousands of people chanting in unison "Fuck you! You're a fucking wanker/We're gonna punch you right in the balls/Fuck you! with a fucking anchor/You're all cunts so fuck you all". Like most of Alestorm's songs, this is a heavy metal sea shanty, albeit with a big rude football chant-style chorus. While there
is some stylistic variety, one can generally describe their music as
The-Pogues-meet-Iron-Maiden. With songs about pirates and booze. Some of the faster songs (e.g. "Pegleg Potion") could also be mistaken for Dropkick Murphys or a similar Celtic Punk band. Onstage they recreate the music with the help of a keytar and synths, but on the record one can discern brass, fiddle, tin whistle, and accordions - or good imitations thereof. Besides the Fuck Song, another highlight is "Alestorm", which combines an aggressive metal style with occasional death metal vocals and a ridiculously catchy chorus. "Mexico" is the "poppiest" song here. Adding some country, 80's video-game noises and quasi-ska rhythm to the mix, it's uncharacteristically light for the band but seriously catchy. "Bar Ünd Imbiss" sports a drunken chorus and the guitar solos one learns to expect from a metal album but are in short supply here, while opener "No Grave But The Sea" is closer to power metal. Ditto for mini-epics "To The End Of The World" and "Treasure Island" which find time for a more complex prog-ish structure. For those who doubted that Alestorm is the
maddest bunch of buffoons in metal, they have included a bonus CD with alternate versions of all the songs for the album's Deluxe edition.
No, they're not unplugged versions, or instrumentals, or demos, or live, not even dance mixes (though that
would have been a bit mad, too). No, it consists of the whole album with
barks instead of vocals. It's called
No Grave But The Sea for Dogs. You can listen to a sample
here, but I warn you: you can
never un-hear it. And the
scary part is... it sounds too natural, as if this is the way it was
meant to be. Could this sick joke turn out to be the next big thing? First every new album comes with a dogs version, then they dispense with the human voices altogether?
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| Alestorm at The Lokerse Feesten 2019 |
**** for No Grave But The Sea, Mexico, Alestorm, Fucked With An Anchor
*** for Bar Ünd Imbiss, Pegleg Potion, Treasure Island
** for To The End Of The World, Man The Pumps, Rage Of The Pentahook
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