Alestorm

The Curse of the Crystal Coconut

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ft. Daiki Tatsuguchi, Fernando Rey, Mathias "Vreth" Lillmåns, Kaelhakase, Patty Gurdy, Captain Yarrface.
Genre: Pirate Metal, Heavy Metal, Power Metal.
Released: 29/05/2020
Via Napalm Records

Album Review: Alestorm – The Curse of the Crystal Coconut

Starting off “The Curse of the Crystal Coconut” is the first single of the album “Treasure Chest Party Quest”. A song that tries to separate Alestorm from their usual pirate based lyrics, but ends up sounding as piratey, if not more, than previous alestorm songs. The music video for this turns the weirdness up to 11, with a hip hop style video showing the band kitted out in full tracksuits, depicting such things as vocalist Christopher Bowes giving birth to himself. Very memorable and a great single.

“Chomp chomp” is the heaviest song on this album with thrash metal elements. This song includes solos from both a guitar, and hurdy gurdy. A catchy song that’ll be fun to mosh to when shows are able to commence again. Second single “Tortuga” follows next, this song is the marmite of the album; It took some time to love it. Building up this song is an epic feeling drum beat that leads to a rap section from Captain Yarrface of Rumahoy. It certainly throws you off on first listening however the more I listened to it the more it grew on me. It’s nice to see Alestorm experimenting.

“Shit Boat (No Fans)” does absolutely nothing for me. A minute long song that has no substance and just repeats “Your pirate ship can eat a bag of dicks” for a majority of that time. It feels like it’s trying to copy 2017’s “Fucked with an Anchor” but boiling it down to just swearing. Maybe this song would be funny, even enjoyable, at a live show with the whole crowd chanting it but just really skippable when listening to the album.

“Wooden Leg Part 2 (The Woodening)” is a sequel to the ridiculous “Wooden Leg” from “Sunset on the Golden Age”… Part 2 drags this song idea out to 8 long minutes. Starting off with an almost Star Wars feeling intro, it features both Japanese and spanish lyrics, and some interesting riffs; It fits a lot into the time. “Fannybaws”, “Call of the Waves”, “Pirate Metal Drinking Crew”, and “Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship” all feel very Alestorm (hyperactive sea shanties) not a lot new, however that’s not to say they’re not catchy and entertaining to listen to. “Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship” is my favourite song off the album, it feels very epic.

On this album, Alestorm also includes two covers. Henry Martin, a traditional scottish folk song, and Pirate’s Scorn, a less traditional song from the Donkey Kong Country animated show. The former closes the album nicely by slowing things down, however being very much in opposition of the rest of the albums jolly pirate anthems. The latter tying the whole theme of the album together. The name of this album is inspired by the DK animated show, and this can be seen on the album cover that pictures the skeletal remains of Donkey Kong, and even a hidden DK logo… Going to be interesting how Nintendo deals with this. A great cover.

The Deluxe version of the album includes “16th Century Versions” of all the songs, however are actually 16 bit versions of the song (Maybe a slight reference to DK again). Although a funny inclusion, I don’t think they hold up to “No Graves but the Sea”’s “For Dogs” versions. There’s something amusing about 45 minutes of dog barking…This album is a good load of fun with some interesting songs, thoses who like Alestorms back catalogue will love this album. With the current state of the world it’s been nice to be able to listen to the satirical likeness of Alestorm. It’s always interesting to see what Alestorm will do as they’re just so mad, a lot of people write the band off because of this and their pirate gimmick, but Alestorm never fails to entertain me.