Splice the main brace
Alestorm describe their music as true Scottish pirate metal and that’s a description you just can’t argue with! From the “ooh arr me hearties” vocals of singer/keyboardist Christopher Bowes to the plastic cutlass waving going on in the crowd everything about them revolves around the high seas and it’s all highly amusing.
They sound exactly like you’d expect, with big driven riffs over layered keyboards and with typical pirate voice vocals. They suffer from a fair few technical problems tonight, most notably with the bass guitar, which cuts out on several occasions but it doesn’t dampen the atmosphere. ‘Leviathan’ aside the song titles all revolve around the pirate theme such as ‘Nancy the Tavern Wench’ and ‘Terror on the High Sea’. The crowd is lively and when Bowes gets the crowd to do a mini wall of death towards the end it’s all pretty funny. Highlights come with ‘Conquer’ and closer ‘Captain Morgan’s revenge’ but you have to wonder how far they can take this as there’s not much variety and it does get a bit repetitive after a while.
Like an unpolished version of Turisas they do a job today and put everybody in the mood for the rest of the night.