ALESTORM — No Grave But The Sea (review)

ALESTORM — No Grave But The Sea album cover

Album · 2017 · Folk Metal

5/5 · 2017-06-02
Vim Fuego

A 12 year old boy can tell you anchor rhymes with wanker, but it took a swag of salty Scottish seamen to actually write a song about it. Celtic pirates singing sweary metal songs about drinking, pillaging, and sailing? It has to be Alestorm.

‘No Grave but the Sea’ carries straight on from where ‘Sunset on the Gold Age’ left off, in that it is an album chock full of tales of grog and girls and gallivanting, and the odd bit of pirating too. What is so surprising is that what a lot of people initially dismissed as a short lived novelty is still going. ‘No Grave but the Sea’ is Alestorm’s fifth album, and there is no sign of the It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. After all, Running Wild have been pumping out piratical power metal since the mid 80s.

Surely no one can keep churning out such melodies forever? Well, it seems like Alestorm’s sole remaining founding member, vocalist and keytarist Christopher Bowes, can. His croaky faux-buccaneer voice produces melody after melody, and his fingers dance across his keytar in an involuntary tarantella.

As ever, the songs are just a bit mad, with a fine twist of silly anachronism thrown in. First song, the title track “No Grave but the Sea” is actually a serious historical account of the Battle of the Saintes, a naval encounter fought in the Caribbean, which forced France and Spain to give up any plans of invading Jamaica. Admiral Sir George Rodney smashed the French fleet through superior tactics, technology, and a little help from the weather. His fleet sent an estimated 3,000 of Admiral Comte de Grasse’s men to Davy Jones’ locker, and captured another 5,000 whilst losing less than 250 British sailors.

So what’s a thirsty privateer to do after such a mission? Not sail back to grotty old Scotland, that’s for sure! No, the good ship Alestorm set sail for “Mexico”, where the cactus grows, ale is free, and er… donkeys provide the entertainment. While in Mexico, it seems Captain Bowes found an odd device called a timecube, which proved the world is not round as first supposed, so then set sail "To The End Of The World". More nautical nuttiness ensues with “Bar Ünd Imbiss", “Pegleg Potion”, and the self-titled “Alestorm”, all odes to the demon drink. “Rage of the Pentahook” is a cautionary tale of a Paraguayan pirate with five hooks on his hand. And speaking of hands, “Man The Pumps” is a double entendre laden elegy to the dangers of excessive masturbation. Hands off boys, it’ll kill ya!

And the anchor/wanker rhyme? It comes from “Fucked With an Anchor”, which sees the poor protagonist cursed with coprolalia, thanks to a witch doctor’s voodoo curse. It makes him a little cross, as the chorus to the songs demonstrates: “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!” The solution? Rectally applying a large device usually employed to prevent a ship from drifting at sea to said doctor. Sounds painful, but the song is more dangerous still. See, the melody and chorus of “Mexico” and “Alestorm” are as infectious as bubonic plague at a fifteenth century rat-fanciers convention, but there is no known cure for the “Fucked With an Anchor” earworm. The simple, expletive-laden refrain will still be banging around in your head days later, as the odd whimpered “fuck” or “wanker” inadvertently slips from your uncontrollable lips.

Alestorm’s brand of melodic folk/thrash metal is too lightweight for many purists, but fuck ‘em. Metal doesn’t always have to be about being the fastest or heaviest. Sometimes, the most scatterbrained story tellers are the most entertaining. Long may Alestorm sail the seas of silliness.