Review by Xephyr for Alestorm - Curse of the Crystal Coconut (2020)

The Woodening: And Other Less Important Songs

The Scottish pirates Alestorm are back once again in their 6th attempt to stick it to that one interviewer who asked them "How many albums can you possibly make about pirates?". Curse of the Crystal Coconut is yet another collection of pirate-based metal tunes that spans a surprising amount of metal sub-genres and gives the die hard fans what they want, which Alestorm has always been consistent at. I came into this album liking Alestorm in the past but absolutely realizing their faults as a band, mostly revisiting No Grave but the Sea and Sunset on the Golden Age to turn my brain off and have some fun listening to spirited tales about wooden peg legs, rum, guns, and general pirate debauchery. Anyone who has delved into Alestorm's discography has probably wondered how long they can keep this shtick up at some point, and now that the band is 12 years deep in their pirating journey, the answer is probably "as long as they feel like it". I never thought Alestorm's music was bad, just a bit uninspired and rough around the edges sometimes, but they're obviously attempting to up the ante in Curse of the Crystal Coconut to try and find any form of escape from the gimmick they've cornered themselves in.

Evident by the opening track "Treasure Chest Party Quest" Alestorm is attempting to pivot their gimmick from their usual fantastical pirate quests to stories and tales about the band themselves in order to have more creative room to work with. Rather than a story about Long Nose the Five Armed Pirate, the band tries their hand at some more blatant than usual fourth-wall breaking with lines about the band selling out and stealing cars on the I-95. "Pirate Metal Drinking Crew" follows the same rules, with the chorus feeling like it was written specifically to be shouted at a crowd of live fans and all the lines alluding to the band themselves. While this approach can work when written in a clever way, Alestorm isn't exactly known for their tactful lyrics or wordplay, especially when they abandon this idea for the rest of the songs on the album, save for "Shit Boat (No Fans)". Even though you could argue that Alestorm's writing and rhyming has been extremely weak since they started, I think it's especially weak on this album, with flimsy and awkward word choices on pretty much every track. The bridge of "Chomp Chomp", the insults on "Shit Boat (No Fans)", the entirety of "Tortuga", and a few other glaring misses make me feel like some of these lines were first drafts and that Alestorm may actually be out of ideas to a certain degree.

That goes for the music as well, with the typical Alestorm pirate-y strings and keyboard sections playing loud and proud over mostly generic galloping guitar riffs that have been heard many times before on their previous albums. Apart from some legitimately great guitar solos on "Fannybaws" and "Chomp Chomp" I'd say the rest is much more forgettable than their normal standard. The keyboards, strings, and vocals carry the melody entirely on each song and even though they do manage to get some good energy out of "Chomp Chomp" and "Pirate Scorn" the rest feels pretty uncreative. "Zombies Ate My Pirate Ship", "Call of the Waves", and "Henry Martin" break up the album with their slower, sweeping, and more ballad-like structures all while keeping some energy intact. They quickly became filler for me though, with the stories not being particularly gripping and the songwriting being pretty dull in general. "Tortuga" is anything but dull with Alestorm attempting to get on the Billboard Top 100 with its combination of Rap, Hip-Hop, and Pirate Metal that just doesn't work no matter how you look at it.

There's only one track I haven't listed yet, and that's for good reason. "Wooden Leg Part 2 (The Woodening)" is, simply, the reason I listen to Alestorm. It's epic, over the top, covers some ridiculous high seas pirate journey, and is (most of the time) hilarious. "Wooden Leg" was a short, three minute song on Sunset on the Golden Age about a poor pirate who had his legs chopped off by a Spanish bastard and his arms chopped off in a duel with a Japanese bastard with a ridiculous chorus of shouting "wooden leg" over and over. The fact that they were able to expand on this short, dumb song and create an eight minute epic about revenge and voodoo curses is amazing in of itself, but the fact that they rewrote the original chorus into a theatrical chant makes the rest of the album worth it to hear that moment. I really wish that the spoken word before the return to the original "Wooden Leg" chorus was stronger, but this song by itself shows that Alestorm still has some wind in their sails.

The fact that "Wooden Leg Part 2 (The Woodening)" was exactly what I wanted left me very conflicted and more frustrated with Curse of the Crystal Coconut if anything. Those eight minutes showed that Alestorm can still write funny material while not succumbing to lame fourth-wall breaking or having to bring in a guest pirate rapper, but here we are. I think this is the first album of theirs that has sounded lazy, generally uninspired, and honestly extremely juvenile. Alestorm has obviously never been mature, but almost none of the rhymes are clever, all the jokes are pretty low-hanging, and none of their stories are fleshed out whatsoever. I think the reason I can't write this off as being another funny Alestorm album is because I can see the potential in writing even crazier and more interesting stories directly in front of me. "Fannybaws" follows the exact same idea as "Rage of the Pentahook" from No Grave but the Sea, so why not have Fannybaws versus the unnamed Pentahook in a fearsome battle? Why not have more of the album centered around the curse of the wooden leg rather than the "Curse of the Crystal Coconut" that was only mentioned during "Pirate's Scorn"? I feel like there's so much potential to make their act even crazier instead of writing the same old generic pirate stories that have next to no substance. Hopefully Alestorm continues to produce more dumb but fantastic songs like "Wooden Leg Part 2" in the future, but as for right now they've veered off course quite a bit.