Fun and jovial albums are quite uncommon. In a forest of dark sounding metal and sometimes a pile of sonic rubbish, something purely entertaining is found while being insanely fantastic. Enter Lagerstein from Australia. Pirate Metal indeed! Fun and metal are definitely best chums in pirate metal. Lagerstein in their latest album ‘All For Rum & Rum For All’ are all about the energy, excitement, adventure and of course, a lot of rum!
Diving right in, a grand entry marks the start of the album with “Raise Your Steins”. The song starts out slow before exploding with fast and catchy sections. This song is a great foundation for the latter of the album. Moving on from this head-bang potential to a dance potential with the song “Drink The Rum”. This song is a trademark pirate metal song. Everything from the arrangements to the lyrics is essentially what would satisfy to be a great pirate metal song. As we continue to sail, songs such as “Sail Ho!”, “Down The Hatch”, “Shiver Me Timbers” and “Land of Bundy” continue to pick up on the enthusiasm and amusement with which each song ends with. The album shows no sign of being draggy or uninteresting.
The craziness on the album takes a break and slows down on the song “Fountains of Rum” with its soft intro. This epic track goes on for a good 19 minutes. Along the way, the song gains momentum and gets stronger and stronger. This track is everything that the album has to offer in one go but with a few of its own unique traits. The song rather quickly transitions into a wall of sounds that one would hear by the sea. From waves to people, this captures the sea. This makes the track really special. This track comprises of music, the sounds of what inspired this music and people too! This is set to take you to the sea. The album comes to and end with a peppy and melodic “Fliegerlied”. The wonderful choruses and the tasteful instrumentation makes this one of the best things on this album!
‘All For Rum & Rum For All’ is incredible. There’s enough for everyone on this record. The balance between keeping the album heavy and melodic with all the fancy instrumentation has given rise to some wonderful textures. The ‘folk’ aspect on the record is as entertaining as the lyrics are and is a link between the heavier parts and the other sections. The songs on the album best describe the excitement of telling an interesting story. Music and a good story definitely make up for a great story on top of that. Raise your sails and raise a toast, here is a great album to drink to!