The past year has been a busy one for Alestorm. With the success of Captain Morgan's Revenge taking them to distant shores to play a hundred shows, tours with Viking nuts Tyr and the Leviathan EP, these four Scottish rogues have never really gone away. It's impressive though that it's barely over a year since their debut and already Black Sails At Midnight is sailing into port.
The big question now of course is whether travelling round the world will have broadened their horizons a bit? Will they perhaps stop writing songs about fighting, drinking and fighting while drinking in order to make in-depth parallels between the free-wheeling fun of Pirate mythology and the life of hardship that can be found with real-world piracy? Has an increased spotlight on Somalian piracy encouraged them to mature the message and expand their musical direction?
Well, there's a drunk rat waving a cutlass on the album cover, so no.
Alestorm: Heavy Metal Pirates
Now it goes without saying that a year between albums isn't a particularly long period of time and while the reduced waiting time was a bonus, it doesn't allow for a tremendous amount of musical development. As a result, Black Sails isn't too far removed from its predecessor, to such an extent that the two could quite easily have been packaged together as a double album and no-one would have batted an eyelid.
For some bands, this repetition could be frustrating but for Alestorm, where the musical emphasis is firmly on fun, the familiarity of this album is actually quite welcoming. Like hooking up with an old girlfriend after years apart and finding out she's still hot, the band's rigid adherence to their own rulebook is suprisingly appealling.
Keelhaul That Filthy Landlubber!
Yes, Alestorm are firmly entrenched in the world of heavy metal crossed with sea shanties, while lyrical subjects rarely stretch beyond violence, alcohol or death. You can hear the naysayers sharpening their cutlasses already but shiver me timbers, you'd have to be one miserable soul with a heart as black as the Marianna trench not to grin like an absolute loon all the way through That Famous Old Spiced.
Granted, not everything works and they do make one utterly horrific misstep with To The End Of Our Days where they wander, in an especially ham-fisted way, into ballad territory. However, for every mistake there are three gems and it's so intoxicating it could even get straight edge kids sozzled.
Ultimately then, Alestorm are a welcome reminder that heavy metal music isn't all Church burning, Satan worshipping, tougher than thou, macho posturing. Sometimes it's a lot of fun and it's a testament to how enjoyable this record is, that Lilly Allen fans will probably get as much out of it as the Wacken crowd. Crack open the rum ye dogs!
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