Alestorm - No Grave But the Sea

ALESTORM!!! Yes! The captains of true Scottish pirate metal have come back for more plunder and more treasure, and this new one certainly is a treasure. Coming off of their 2014 album Sunset on the Golden Age, which was kind of missing of much of the humor in some areas and storytelling in others that made their debut album so epic, I wasn’t really expecting that much from No Grave but the Sea. The lads surprised me greatly though with the catchy songs, the elevated musicianship, and the beautifully tasteless sea shanty humor that fills this album’s mug to the brim with cheap ale. This is probably my favorite album on this list for just how much Alestorm succeed at continuing to stand out and find creative ideas with their trademark sound. The title track kicks the album off with an invigorating combination of double-bass and synthesized trumpets that make me so eager to go die upon the open ocean with me crew. The adventurous epic tales of ship-plundering and high seas dangers told in “Treasure Island” and “To the End of the World” are some of Alestorm’s most captivating and provide a sense of virtue for the band for their adherence to their subject matter. What makes the band and the album so loveable, though, is how they still remember to not take themselves too seriously. The band’s proclaimed-“stupid” singles “Alestorm” and “Mexico” stringing together drunken pirate recollections in folky anthems that any self-respecting pirate could sing along to. The epitome of this carefree attitude arrives with the absurdly profane “Fucked with an Anchor” that caught me entirely off guard, laughing and trying to hold it back in a setting in which I should not have been laughing. Songs like “Pegleg Potion”, “Bar und Imbiss”, and “Rage of the the Pentahook” keep the catchy storytelling going and the romanticizing of the freedom of illegal nautical life strong. The only things that maybe hold the album back are the lack of diversity of synthesized folk instruments that could give each song that extra character if utilized properly, and the band seems to rely a bit much on upward key-shifts during many of the song’s bridges. Despite working with the lyrical and vocabulary limitations they do Alestorm prove they still have plenty of fresh ideas and new ways to convey the well-known and well-sung motifs of the pirate’s life. The way Alestorm present it, the it’s definitely a pirate’s life for me too.

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