Alestorm - Black Sails At Midnight
Napalm Records - NPR 290 - 1 June 2009
By Ellie McGee
Alestorm, Alestorm, Alestorm. A band who, after the anarchic excellence of Captain Morgan’s Revenge, could so easily have produced a truly dreadful second album and disappeared into the depths of novelty metal whose time has passed. Thankfully, instead of doing that or anything close, they’ve produced Black Sails At Midnight, which is cracking.
'The Quest' kicks off the album on a suitably folky note that, musically at least, sounds not unlike your average folk metal band having a rather inebriated jam session. Vocally however, it’s pure swaggering piratical metal as only Alestorm can do it and, while this is usually where I go on to review each track individually, I have to admit that a track-by-track of this album is rather pointless. It’s pointless because you know the drill, and even if you don’t, you’ll pick it up pretty quickly. This is True Scottish Pirate Metal™, bellowed out in the usual (and strangely fitting) Scottish accent, with the charm and fun both cranked up to eleven. This combination results, as previously, in some damned good metal and the finest drinking songs this side of drunken Finns running round forests with wooden tankards and not a stitch on.
In short, if Turisas and Korpiklaani got slaughtered with Captain Jack Sparrow in a remote Scottish pub and decided to start a supergroup, Alestorm is what they’d sound like, and this is the album they’d come up with. Alestorm have even found their own Rasputin, in a cover of Latvia’s 2008 Eurovision entry, 'Wolves of the Sea', a track they won’t to be allowed to miss out of a setlist for years, if ever.
If the idea of drunken Scottish pirate metal catchier than Ebola doesn’t float your boat, I strongly suggest buying something else and checking your wrist for a pulse. If, however, you stopped reading two paragraphs ago to go and find your sword and tankard, all I can say is this: if you don’t already own Black Sails At Midnight, why the hell not?
Official Alestorm Myspace
Official Napalm Records Website
Napalm Records - NPR 290 - 1 June 2009
By Ellie McGee
Alestorm, Alestorm, Alestorm. A band who, after the anarchic excellence of Captain Morgan’s Revenge, could so easily have produced a truly dreadful second album and disappeared into the depths of novelty metal whose time has passed. Thankfully, instead of doing that or anything close, they’ve produced Black Sails At Midnight, which is cracking.
'The Quest' kicks off the album on a suitably folky note that, musically at least, sounds not unlike your average folk metal band having a rather inebriated jam session. Vocally however, it’s pure swaggering piratical metal as only Alestorm can do it and, while this is usually where I go on to review each track individually, I have to admit that a track-by-track of this album is rather pointless. It’s pointless because you know the drill, and even if you don’t, you’ll pick it up pretty quickly. This is True Scottish Pirate Metal™, bellowed out in the usual (and strangely fitting) Scottish accent, with the charm and fun both cranked up to eleven. This combination results, as previously, in some damned good metal and the finest drinking songs this side of drunken Finns running round forests with wooden tankards and not a stitch on.
In short, if Turisas and Korpiklaani got slaughtered with Captain Jack Sparrow in a remote Scottish pub and decided to start a supergroup, Alestorm is what they’d sound like, and this is the album they’d come up with. Alestorm have even found their own Rasputin, in a cover of Latvia’s 2008 Eurovision entry, 'Wolves of the Sea', a track they won’t to be allowed to miss out of a setlist for years, if ever.
If the idea of drunken Scottish pirate metal catchier than Ebola doesn’t float your boat, I strongly suggest buying something else and checking your wrist for a pulse. If, however, you stopped reading two paragraphs ago to go and find your sword and tankard, all I can say is this: if you don’t already own Black Sails At Midnight, why the hell not?
Official Alestorm Myspace
Official Napalm Records Website
