Metal Underground.com

Drink up me hearties! Alestorm is back to cliché you to death on a new album of quest and rum…and quest for rum. Apparently, they haven’t run out of ideas like the lyric in the now ‘old tune’ “Scraping the Barrel” (Many have told us that we can’t go on, that one day we’ll run out of lyrics for songs, But when the time comes to wrote album four, we’ll scrape at the barrel once more). So here we sit at album five and how many times can you count the words: pirates, rum, quest, sail, and drink? How long of a review do you want? “No Grave but the Sea” has all been heard before, but the band scrapes the barrel once more and fucks you all with an anchor!

Everything that makes Alestorm the single most fun band on both album and live fronts is at work here. If you give a crap about things like change and progression, you should head to the next port. Here it’s about stealing free beer, finding a wench, sailing on a quest for treasure and fighting only for the glory of death. This won’t win many album of the year votes, but it should win most fun album of the year.

Back at the helm is Captain Chris Bowes along with trustee mates Gareth Murdock (bass), Peter Alcorn (drums), Elliot Vernon (keyboards) and newest scallywag Mate Bodor (guitars). On the knobs is the great Lasse Lammert, who elevates his legacy with another stellar job of creating pristine sound with the latest adventures. So where does the band take us now? Set sail for the next paragraph to find out!

Sadly, the story starts in the watery depths of death, but the merry band of pirates quickly set out far to the south where the cactus grows. After packing the Corona, the band heads off to the End of the World, praises itself, heads to port for a little mead, snacks and debauchery, insults everyone with an anchor to the cunt, makes a bitchin batch of pegleg potion to toast the end of time, and then humps the pumps to fix a leaky ship in order to fight off the Pentahook so they can finally end up on Treasure Island. Best adventures lie in “Mexico,” the cheeky “Bar Und Imbiss,” the 8 minute epic “Treasure Island” and the hysterical “Fucked With An Anchor.”

Much in the vein of Bowes’ Gloryhammer, Alestorm can wrap every album in the silliest humor and make much better music than those that take things more seriously. The band has a noble following and for good reason, because life need not be any more serious than it is. Alestorm magically makes any dark day bright with a combination of humor, alcohol and adventure. Throw whatever silly term you want to apply, these pirates write catchier tunes than any of you. Quest!