YO HO HO AND A BOTTLE O' RUM! AND MORE RUM!
How do you know if you’re a pirate? You just ARRRRRGGH!
How do you know if you’re a pirate-metaller? Well, if you’re perma-drunk, (dead man’s) cursed to forever plough through rocked-up sea-shanties, have some ridiculous leather fancy dress (and perhaps a plastic parrot) fused to your flesh and suffer the derision of other more ‘serious’ bands while commanding a massive fanbase of your own, chances are you’ve got the sonic scurvy.
It’s International Talk Like A Pirate day, and we thought we’d celebrate by running through 10 of the greatest albums ever to grace the Seven Seas (or, y’know, our stereos). So grab a bottle or two of rum, strap on an eye-patch, raise up your plastic cutlass and prepare to get keelhauled with some of the most stupidly fun music you’ll ever witness.
One caveat: this is a purely piratical list and more conventional folk/battle metallers (we’re looking at you Turisas, Ensiferum and Eluveite) have been purposefully excluded.
ALESTORM – CAPTAIN MORGAN’S REVENGE
(NAPALM, 2008)
There’s really only one place to start with Pirate Metal. Hailing from fucking Perthshire of all places, the genre's great Scots mightn’t have invented the idea of attaching tales of seafaring mischief to jaunty folk-metal, but they did just about perfect it with this outrageous debut LP – and spearheaded the popularisation that’s seen the subgenre explode over the past decade. Over The Seas, the title-track, Nancy The Tavern Wench and Wenches & Mead are all full-sail-ahead classics. And there’s a purely piratical charm about this record from the time before Alestorm's stage gear incorporated banana-ducks and photos of the Archbishop of Canterbury…
LAGERSTEIN – ALL FOR RUM & RUM FOR ALL
(INDY, 2016)
This could as easily be re-titled All For Fun & Fun For All. Even within this silliest of subgenres, Lagerstein – the misfit crew from Brisbane, Australia – stand peg-leg and eye-patch above the competition in terms of the sheer unadulterated pursuit of enjoyment. Smoothing out the rougher edges of 2012 debut Drink ’Til We Die, songs like Fountain Of Rum and Down The Hatch ensure this is not an album to be consumed sober. Sure, there’s something slightly odd about pirates from Oz, but if you really think about it a sun-drenched island that loves to party was obviously going to get in on the act…
SWASHBUCKLE – BACK TO THE NOOSE
(NUCLEAR BLAST, 2009)
Binding heavier elements of death and thrash to their swollen folk-metal, New Jersey mob Swashbuckle might be the most progressive of the pirate metal pack. That’s certainly not to say they lack for cracked grinning idiocy, with tracks like Scurvy Back, Cloudy With A Chance Of Piracy, We Sunk Your Battleship and Rime Of The Haggard Mariner piling on the good time feels. Extra credit, also, for looking like the sort of murderously filthy animals you really wouldn’t want to run into while out for a quiet cruise...
RUNNING WILD – PORT ROYAL
(NOISE, 1988)
It’s hardly surprising that this most outlandish of gimmick-metal subgenres started in Germany. Along with Running Wild's 1987 predecessor Under Jolly Roger, this power metal masterpiece (named after the place of execution of infamous English captain Calico Jack) turned out to be wildly ahead of its time. Existing before folk-metal had really started to take-off there’s more of a classic sea-shanty vibe about this sound, channelled through a power-metal lens. The Hamburg crew also boast one of the most impressive ever hauls of booty: eventually shifting almost 2 million copies.
THE DEAD CREW OF ODDWOOD – ROCKTOPUS
(INDY, 2010)
Referring to their specific brand of mostly-acoustic pirate metal as ‘Heavy Mahogany', these San Diegan swashbucklers provide some slightly less headbanging relief to the list. There’s a weird sense of historical accuracy in what they do, with the use of traditional strings, horns and squeezeboxes erring far closer to the actual sounds the pirates themselves would’ve been able to enjoy – and a sense of tongue-in-cheek historical narrative accuracy running through tracks like Queen’s Decree. That said, we’re pretty sure the pirates never actually murdered Queen Elizabeth...
VERBAL DECEPTION – AURUM AETUS PIRATICUS
(SCARAB METAL, 2006)
Translating as ‘Golden Age Of Piracy’, this is another outlier that predates the Alestorm boom, this sole release from Calgary, Alberta Canada packs in a bunch of elements that would eventually make the genre massive: creaky instrumentation, jaunty synth flourishes and, er, songs about piracy. It’s delivered with a sort of death metal growl that suggests these lads were listening to a lot of Amon Amarth’s viking metal at the time (THAT’S PIRATE-METAL SACRILEGE!) but tracks like Jewels Of The Dead, Under The Black Flag and voyage are churningly infectious enough to get our thumbs-up. A forgotten (buried?!) treasure.
SCUURVY – ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS
(INDY, 2008)
Another forgotten jewel. Another random entry originating from Brisbane. There’s a nicely stripped-down silliness to absurdly-titled cuts like The Bloodsoaked Shores Of Insanity and The Formidable Tale Of The Fearless Captain Rotgut McBroadsword, with the odd infusion of a bit of death metal heaviosity. A nice succinct bit of nastiness.
THE PRIVATEER – THE GOLDSTEEN LAY
(NOISEART, 2017)
Already veterans of the pirate-metal scene of over a decade, this third LP from The Privateer saw them refine their shtick with some welcome elements: gutteral black metal vocals, some lovely orchestration and cannon-blast power-metal flourishes. Top song titles include Where Fables Are Made, Draft Of The Strange and Survival Of The Quickest. This is about as straight-down-the-line as pirate metal comes, but there’s a real quality in that.
RED RUM – BOOZE AND GLORY
(INDY, 2015)
The East Midlands’ pirate-metal heroes are still amongst the subgenre’s rising heroes. This 2015 LP sees Red Rum err close to the treasure map laid out by genre (skull ’n’ crossbones) flagbearers Alestorm while packing just enough of their own particular gunpowder to keep things interesting. There’s also a pleasant booziness running through their veins, with tracks like Drenched In Ale, Beer A Flowin’ and Dutch Courage doing exactly what they say on the tin. Murderously good.
ALESTORM – SUNSET ON THE GOLDEN AGE
(NAPALM, 2014)
Normally, lists like these would be limited to one release per band. Such is the dominance of Cap'n Christopher Bowes and his motley crew, however, that a case could me made to include almost their entire back-catalogue. Although there's a temptation to chuck in Back Through Time (their mental masterpiece built around the concept of pirates travelling, er, back through time to murder some Vikings) as a second choice, it’s impossible to overlook the supernova quality of the songs on here. From permanent setlist-fixture Drink to Mead From Hell to Surf Squid Warfare to an inspired cover of Taio Cruz’s Hangover, these are the sounds of marauding villains with a playful smile on their face and a confident spring in their step. They might’ve dropped a self-referential song called Scraping The Barrel in 2011, but this was proof that there’s plenty of life in these old bones yet…
Words: Sam Law
