While this new article may seem a little similar to the "What's that all about?" feature, yet to air, it is in fact quite different. This will be a one-off series looking into one particular aspect of Metal that is perhaps sneered at by some, liked by others, loved by a few and perhaps even there are metalheads out there who are unaware even of the existence of this type of music. So under the banner of
we're going to have a look at the oft-ridiculed Metal that flies its own flag and doesn't give a curse what anyone else thinks.
We metalheads sometimes take our subgenres too seriously --- such-and-such is not a metal subgenre, such-and-such is not this subgenre, it's that one, etc --- and even last year I knew when I ran “What's that all about?” that Viking Metal was not strictly speaking a subgenre of metal, but it was fun to explore. This, on the other hand, I know not to be
any sort of subgenre, but by Blackbeard's ghost, it's going to be fun to write about!
Though neither are strictly speaking subgenres of metal, bands who play Viking Metal (as written about by me last year) tend to generally take their subject quite seriously, and why not? It is after all usually their past and their heritage they're singing about, and that demands to be treated with respect and not sent up. Pirate Metal, on the other hand, by its very nature cannot be taken seriously. How can it? It's all about looting, pillaging, sailing the high seas and thumbing your nose at the law; serious subjects when they actually occurred, and piracy was likely to get a man hanged if he were caught, but now the stuff of swashbuckling Hollywood movies and cartoons. The whole idea of piracy --- the irreverent, macho, live for today attitude --- demands to be played with tongue inserted firmly in cheek, and so this is how Pirate Metal bands approach the subject matter. You might as well expect the likes of Tankard to write deep, meaningful lyrics about getting pissed --- it simply does not happen, and we love Tankard and their ilk for this very reason, the fact that they neither take themselves seriously nor expect their fans to.
Not that I'm suggesting in any way that these are joke bands, or that they don't apply themselves with the utmost fervour and dedication to their music. They're metal bands, of course they do. In the same way as some of those we have yet to meet in the “When Worlds Collide” section, coming up later, though poking gentle fun at certain subjects, are competent musicians and professionals, play well and write (or parody) well, so the likes of The Dread Crew of Oddwood, Swashbuckle, Running Wild and Alestorm make sure their songs are well-written, well researched and played, but above all, great fun. That is, so far as I can see, given the somewhat paucity of the information available, the main aim of any Pirate Metal band: to have a good time, and ensure that their fans and those who listen to their music do likewise.
This article, though it will be seriously looking at the phenomenon of Pirate Metal, will have much humour in it, so expect many cliches and pirate phrases. And if ye don't like that, then ye're a scurvy dog and we'll keelhaul ye and send ye to the bottom o' Davy Jones' Locker! So hoist the tops'l, weigh anchor, fix yer eyepatch and check yer cutlass is at yer side, as we're about to sail forth across the majestic sea in search of plunder, booty and fame. And beer. Lots of beer.
Har har, me hearties! Tis t' glory we sail! With a yo ho ho, and perhaps I might venture to add, a bottle of rum into the bargain?
The earliest version of Pirate Metal known to exist is from a band called Running Wild from Germany. Having released two albums with more-or-less black metal influences, at least lyrically, they changed their direction with 1987's
Under Jolly Roger, veering more in the way of pirate-themed songs. Although this was not initially planned, as Rolf Kasparek explains in this 1996 interview with Martin Frust:
”That was just a coincidence and not planned at all. When we we're working on Under Jolly Roger some years ago, we were looking for a title song and I thought "Under Jolly Roger" is a really good title. So we had the cover and our stage clothes designed around that. I read a lot of books about the subject and found everything very interesting. It fit together very well and we enhanced the subject with Port Royal. Within a short time it had become our trademark and it's remained with us to this day.” (
WebCite query result)
Whether by accident or design then (depending on how much you can believe Kasparek) it can be said that Running Wild created the whole idea of Pirate Metal, and so it is with them we should begin. Though there are relatively few bands involved in the scene, some of them have a reasonably large discography, so it stands to reason I won't be reviewing every album, but like other articles I have written in the past will just select a few albums which I think or hope will best represent their body of work. There is of course no doubt about where we should and will start though.
Under Jolly Roger --- Running Wild --- 1987 (Noise)
After their Satanic/black metal approach to their first two albums had not seemed to work, or had been pushing them in the wrong direction, Rolf Kasparek decided that having written the title track, the idea was so strong and at the time so new that really, this should be their new image and he wrote the rest of the album around that track, resulting in the first Pirate Metal album. Oddly though, he seems a little confused with the motives of pirates on this first song. He tries to make them out as noble avengers,
”Venerable scoundrels, no blood on our hands/ Our engagements are tough, but only for defence” which apart from being a terrible rhyme is totally inaccurate, as is
”Coming through the waves to free all the captives” --- what captives? Slaves? Men who had been press-ganged into serving on ships? Why? And how would they even know about such ships and who was aboard? Pirates didn't care about such things; they were not the liberators of the high seas. They sailed and fought for gain, for gold and silver and spices, anything they could rob and sell, and they certainly
did have blood on their hands, as few if any of the crews of the ships they attacked wouldbe allowed to live and would fight to survive.
Perhaps, these being his first, faltering steps into a brand new style of metal, at least lyrically, Kasparek was feeling his way, testing out the water, to use a very appropriate metaphor, to see if the fans responded to such material. But it's odd: Viking metal bands didn't try to pretend their heroes were just farmers pillaging to survive, or taking land that had been originally theirs, because neither is true. Everyone knows what the Norsemen were; history has made that plain. And in the same way, we know enough about pirates --- both historically and through the less well balanced and informed lens of Hollywood --- to know they were rough, tough men who asked no quarter and certainly gave none, men who lived by their wits and their strength, and who seldom if ever backed down from a fight. They were also unlikely to leave too many survivors once they boarded a ship. So this kind of “pussification” of pirates is both inaccurate and quite annoying. It's kind of like he's saying “We're pirates, but we're not
bad pirates. We only do this because we have to”, which is also completely wrong. With a few exceptions, the vast majority of pirates chose that career, and most of them were good enough sailors and captains that, had they wished to, they could have served in any navy or onboard any merchant vessel. They just didn't want to; they preferred the life of a buccaneer.
Be all that as it may, the music is pretty damn sweet. With the sounds of surf, the creak of boards, shouts of “Ship ahoy!” and then cannon firing, we're launched into the world of Pirate Metal with the title track. The vocal of Rolf Kasparek (who I'll just refer to as Rolf from now on) is a good dark throaty gruff kind of snarl, low enough to make you think of pirate captains but still very understandable. The chorus is really anthemic, and I love the way cannon keep firing off through the song. “Under Jolly Roger”, then, introduces the whole concept of pirates (for those who somehow have never heard of them) and it's pretty much a mission statement, with a powerful ending that really befits such a song, and indeed the birth of a whole new way of looking at heavy metal lyrics. To be fair, “Beggar's night” doesn't really fit into the band's new persona, and is not that much related to the pirate theme, unless you take it that the beggars who
”stand up to break our chains” include men who are, or would go on to be, pirates. Really though I don't see it as part of the pirate thing. Good song though.
“Diamonds of the black chest” could qualify on its title alone, and the search for this elusive treasure, but turns out to be a parable about chasing an unattainable goal when, after finally tracking down and opening the legendary chest, he opens it but
”No diamonds but he sees his own face/ A possessed wreck with an empty gaze”. In the same way, “War in the gutter” really harks back to “Beggar's night”, concentrating on the poor and disenfranchised rising up and taking power. Again, it, like the three tracks before it, is a good metal track and rockets along nicely with some fine solos, but there's nothing even vaguely piratey about it. “Raise your fist” --- a cliche if ever I heard one --- steals lines from Lizzy's “The boys are back in town” for the opening words, but comes across as an exhortation to kids to rebel and stand up to authority. In some ways, it's a little worrying as it could be read (though I'm sure it's not intended as such) as a call to those unhinged kids who go to school one day with automatic weapons and another massacre is perpetrated. I'm a little worried at the refrain:
”Come on kids unite and let us feel the flames of rage/ Together we are strong so let's tear up this golden cage/ We shall overcome repression and their straining strings /The shackles have to fall and we will be metallian kings/ Raise your fist!” Um, yeah....
At least “Land of ice” has ships mentioned in its lyric, but it turns out to be a rather ham-fisted morality tale about nuclear weapons which I must admit I don't understand, at least the references to experiments in 1987 and 1999. Has a nice, crushing, ominous feel to it, very slow and almost doomy, with wind and thunder effects and for me betrays a kind of Dio influence. “Raw hide” is a by-the-numbers metal motorbike song, and the album ends on “Merciless game”, a quasi-political song that has exactly zero pirates in it.
TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS
1. Under Jolly Roger
2. Beggar's night
3. Diamonds of the black chest
4. War in the gutter
5. Raise your fist
6. Land of ice
7. Raw ride
8. Merciless game
Okay, in retrospect that probably wasn't the best album to take as our first example of Pirate Metal, as 95% of it has nothing to do with pirates. However, it is I believe still important to have featured, as it shows how, on the next album, Running Wild dropped almost all other lyrical themes and concentrated on the pirate thing. Didn't they? No? Um, well ... It's also, as already mentioned, the very first example of Pirate Metal, and even if the opening and title track is all that concerns the subject, it's still important.
So by the following year Running Wild had grasped the nettle firmly and run with the idea of a pirate themed album, appropriately called
Port Royal, after the infamous pirate city of the seventeenth century, former capital of Jamaica. Originally authorised by the Queen to harry the Spanish fleets, these men were called privateers, presumably to distinguish them from “common” pirates, and the most famous of their number was of course Sir Francis Drake. With loose morals and even looser laws, Port Royal was where the privateer fleets berthed, where they had their homes and where, after losing the royal seal of approval when they became too rich and powerful and could have been seen to have threatened the Crown, they reverted to lawless ways and their own code, leading to the legend of the pirates we know today.
Even at this point, the band have not yet thrown their full weight behind the idea of pirates, despite the title and the album cover, and really only three of these tracks can confidently claim to be “pirate songs” (well, four if you include the intro, a fifty-second track that simply tells you you're in Port Royal!) while Running Wild look back to their not-yet-totally-abandoned past, with songs railing against God and religion, and a few about rebellions and revolts a la “Beggar's night” and “War in the gutter”. You can't really blame them: the first of their contemporaries would only form in 2002, a whole fourteen years later, and their real comrades in arms, Alestorm, would only get together two years after that, so for almost a decade and a half Running Wild were flying the Jolly Roger alone, trying to bring the idea of Pirate Metal to the masses, in a time when other bands were concentrating on writing power metal lyrics, or black metal, or getting into thrashier, faster stuff. Generally speaking, in terms of bands, nobody else was interested in jumping aboard ship.
So, still possibly unsure as to whether this new direction was the right one or not (though surely encouraged by record sales, which showed an increase of 200,000 on the previous album, topping out at 1.8 million units --- they must have realised they were doing something right, as both of these albums separately sold more than their first two combined. But it was still a slow process), they released their fourth album, second "Pirate Metal" one, but even so, as I say we have a lot of non-pirate songs on this album.
Port Royal --- Running Wild --- 1988 (Noise)
As I mentioned already, the opening track is fifty seconds long and consists of nothing more than footsteps walking presumably along a pier and then into an alehouse, from which raucous laughter and sea shanties emit, the unnamed stranger walks up to the bar, obviously lost, and asks “Where am I?” to which a hearty laugh responds telling him he is in Port Royal! We then hammer into the title track, which speaks of the famous port, with a great anthemic chorus. It's driven on fast guitar in very much a power metal vein, and it would have been nice had this introduced a whole album of pirate songs, but “Raging fire”, though you could really stretch it and call it one, is really more a song of revenge and revolt, then they're back to talking about the hypocisy of religion in “Into the arena”.
If anyone thinks I'm glossing over any tracks that aren't relevant to the subject, you're right: I'm not writing this to review albums by these bands, but to look at their contribution to the pseudo-subgenre, so if a track or ten tracks have nothing to do with Pirate Metal, I'm just mentioning them in passing. This should be not taken to mean the songs are not good --- most of them are, very very good indeed --- simply that they don't fall within the criteria under which I'm writing this. I will however draw your attention to “Uaschitschun”, which is based on the disenfranchisement of the Native American, and a very powerful song. Driven by a guitar riff that somehow sounds like a Native American dance or chant, it ends with the famous and moving speech by Chief Seattle to the men who came to try to purchase his lands:
“Only when the last tree has been felled, the last fish caught and the last river poisoned will we know that man cannot eat money.”
“Final gates” is a short instrumental, and while “Conquistadores” brings us a little closer to the world of the pirate, it is of course about Cortez and the Spanish explorers who succeeded in wiping out the entire Aztec race in their greed for gold. Although “Blown to kingdom come” sounds like it should be a pirate song, I can't find any references to such in the lyric, and it seems to refer more to knights and warriors, and be a kind of anti-war song of sorts. As indeed is “Warchild”. This kind of stance against war sort of grates with their professed love of pirates; I mean, after all, there's certainly conflict, even war of sorts in the life of a pirate. So far, I am finding Running Wild to be something of a contadiction, but they sure can rock!
“Mutiny” gets us back on the high seas, and tells the story of sailors who have been pushed too far ---
”The water barrels going bad/ Daily a sailor dies...” and the death of one of their shipmates that pushes them over the edge and forces them to take command of the ship on which they serve. It's not a pirate song, but it's about halfway there, and you can imagine that the mutineers, if they get away with it, may indeed go on to become bucanneers and corsairs, but there's nothing ambiguous about “Calico Jack”. The closing track introduces us to the eponymous pirate, and it's their longest song yet, at over eight minutes. With a sort of Maiden feel to parts of it, it opens on an acoustic guitar that then gives way to a powerful electric and takes off into pure power metal territory, rocking and rollicking along. Calico Jack doesn't get away with it though, and we hear the judge tell him that he has been found guilty of piracy and sentence him to be hanged, however the pirate's mocking laughter echoes as he is taken away, swearing he will see the judge again.
Seems he was a real figure, which doesn't really surprise me, as Rolf is known for diligently researching for his songs, and Calico Jack appears to have been the pirate who designed and first flew the skull and crossbones flag, the Jolly Roger. However I was surprised to see that Rolf had him sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, which as far as I know was a punishment reserved for traitors to the Crown, and I don't think piracy (which would have been looked upon as mere thievery but on a grander scale) would have fit that description, so it's more than likely that he was just hanged. I also note that his character features in the new TV drama
Black Sails.
TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS
1. Intro
2. Port Royal
3. Raging fire
4. Into the arena
5. Uaschitschun
6. Final gates
7. Conquistadores
8. Blown to kingdom come
9. Warchild
10. Mutiny
11. Calico Jack