Back to the Noose

I hated Swashbuckle. Watching their videos on YouTube, I was overcome with a primal urge to troll the comments, making fat jokes and retardation jokes. There was just something so wrong with a morbidly obese man belting out joke lyrics about pirates while his compatriots dressed in 1700's attire played along with him. Something just wasn't right, so I took it upon myself to be the ultimate internet enemy of Swashbuckle, the troll who posted everywhere and all the time, never taking a break from his incessant bashing. And whaddya know, two weeks later, Swashbuckle are opening for Korpiklaani at a show I was at; I had been dreading this moment for quite a while, thinking that the show would be spoiled by the piratical antics. But you know what? Something happened. Something changed inside me: where just two minutes ago I was sourly glaring at the band, now I was cheerily headbanging along. I know what you're thinking: how can such a bitter cynic be transformed into a worshiping zealot so quickly? Surely, you are jesting? Well, no I'm not, and I'll tell you why.

Many metal bands attempt to have a comical or radical image while maintaining their metalness, and it usually doesn't work out well. Steel Panther are a joke, White Wizzard are confusing to many (as to what they want to be) and Stovokor fail completely at this compromise. Swashbuckle on the other hand, manage it. When they're playing live, when you're listening to their albums, it sounds just RIGHT. Despite the blow-up palm trees and plushie-toy parrots, they play with overwhelming conviction and force, almost convincing you on the spot that they truly are pirates from the 1700's that traveled forward in time to play pants-shittingly awesome music. Basically, they have pulled off a comical image without losing an ounce of brutality or ferocity. And this is why they rock.

But now that I've finished my [lengthy] introduction, let me actually review the album in question. Since this album is much like a concept album (or Rock Opera) and follows a general storyline, I'll review the album chronologically, going from track to track. We begin with a cheery acoustic piece, which quickly turns epic and loud as electric guitars and drums join the mix. And again, just a few dozen seconds after the first transformation, we're into track 2 "Scurvy Back", which is now a general thrash song, but with a small pang of the kind of epic sorrow you get from Bathory or Tyr. But as the song ends, the pang of epic sorrow consumes the song in a heart-wrenching moment of brotherhood (We'll thrash until we die!/'Til our ships burn to the sky!) which almost makes you want to cry. But now that that "sissy" moment is over, we have a track made of 50% music and 250% ferocity, "Back To The Noose". At this point we get a good taste of how good the guys can play their instruments, and they do not disappoint. Drumming is consistent, tight and fast, bass is also great and the guitar is well-played, although at this point the riffs are still just your basic thrash-attack kind of thing, nothing fascinatingly innovative (yet). After "Back To The Noose", we have our very first WTF moment on this album: a track that is quite literally Weather Channel music. If this were any other band, I would scream and toss the CD out of the stereo before burning it in a hellish tribute to Satan. But since this album is about pirates, it works, and luckily it's only a little bit over a minute long.

We return from the bland "Cloudy With A Chance Of Piracy" to a brutal taunting song, "We Sunk Your Battleship". This song is the metal equivalent of an orgasm induced by war. It sounds as though they just tried to fit as many chords and lyrics as they possibly could into a timespan of less than one minute. The result is unrelenting shouting and pounding on instruments, a jazzy solo, then more pounding. Next is a track which could very well fit in a pirate musical, "Rounds Of Rum". With catchy choruses and a seadog attitude, this song conjures images of a flamboyant Captain giving orders to his crew in song, who respond in the same fashion. Now we have another non-metal track "Carnivale Boat Ride", although this one is not nearly as strange as the first one, since it isn't totally out of place, but does have a certain foreboding atmosphere. After "Carnivale", we have a spoken word/atmospheric piece "Rime Of The Haggard Mariner", which features an old man speaking of pirates, followed by what sounds like fat tourists trying to be their child, but their search is cut short by a pirate raid, at which point "Cruise Ship Terror" cuts in and takes you on an orgasmic ride of pirate pillaging. This is the best song on the album, with great vicious riffs and drumming and a crushing breakdown followed by one of the most complex and astonishing guitar solos I have ever witnessed. Instead of just playing scales or random notes really quickly, Commodore RedRum here uses the whammy bar to create such beautiful noises that I would never have guessed came out of a guitar. Ending with a hilarious (yet scary, in a way) line, "WE STOLE YOUR SHIT!", "Cruise Ship Terror" is the quintessential Swashbuckle song, if not the quintessential pirate metal song.

After "Cruise Ship Terror", the album decreases in quality and interesting parts. We get another non-metal acoustic piece, followed by two generic thrash songs ("The Grog Box" has a cool intro) followed by yet another acoustic piece, which is thankfully the last annoying one. After that, the album just continues in thrashing glory, with some cool riffs and lyrics on "Peg-Leg Stomp" and "It Came From The Deep!", but overall, the rest of the album is pretty generic.

All in all, this is a great thrash album, a masterpiece of "pirate" metal and a swashbuckling tale told in vicious shouting and virtuosic solos. If you love pirates, metal or anything even closely related to the two, you should get this album. It is definitely worth the money! Arr!

Highlights:

-Cruise Ship Terror
-Back To The Noose
-Peg-Leg Stomp
-Scurvy Back
-Rounds Of Rum