A second shot from Scotland was prepared and aimed as the pirates of Alestorm were ready to board the stage at Metaldays.
We had already seen Christopher Bowes perform with his other band, Gloryhammer, and the attentive one had also seen Daniel ‘Dani’ Evans at the start of that show working as a bass-tech. Now it was time for the main Scotsmen of the festival to make their presence known however, guns blazing and rum flowing...

“Good evening Metaldaycare!”
- Christopher Bowes (vocals/keyboard)

An intro announced their coming, and then we were quickly swept up in The Quest which was just as quickly followed by The Sunk’n Norwegian.
The crowd was a great deal larger than they had been for Gloryhammer, and even more active already this early on in the show – it didn’t take long before a massive amount of crowd-surfers came sailing by, and they easily put In Flames record breaking try-out from the evening before to shame, and remember that Alestorm didn’t even have to ask for it to happen, they just delivered and people went there of their own free will!
Skipping forward to Shipwrecked, we got to sea (wink, wink) Apart from dancing and singing, we were also treated to a wall of death when the band reached Captain Morgan’s Revenge towards the end of the concert, and by this time I think everyone who were interested in being entertained had been just so in plenty.

Not that the band was outstanding though, but they delivered some good, clean (well, more or less) entertainment, nothing more nothing less.
In dedicating the cover track Wolves Of The Sea to the things coming out of his stomach in the morning, Bowes in a quite too colourful way gave the explanation to why his performing skills weren’t exactly on top this day; he had just recently been exposed to food poisoning, and was still very much suffering the consequences of this! If you read our review of Gloryhammer, you might recall me commenting on him taking on a surprisingly anonymous role during this gig; well, the performance with Alestorm wasn’t much better. In fact, there were at least two times Bowes had to leave the stage to go and throw up, a break-time his band-mates quickly filled with drinking.
The rest of the crew, who were seemingly healthy enough, if this can be said for anyone playing in Alestorm, gave a standard performance, lively but with memorable features. I was surprised to see an extra keyboard player on stage, a Mr. Elliot ‘Windrider’ Vernon, but apart from being there, his actions weren’t all that noteworthy either.

Given the great response I understood that the band got the last time they were visiting these shores, it was only obvious for the festival to grant them the upgrade from second stage to main stage this year, and the crowd surely wasn’t taking things any easier!
The band was, as I said, delivering some ok entertainment, but they were clearly not reaching their full potential this day, understandably so under the circumstances.

Setlist:

The Quest
The Sunk’n Norwegian
Wolves Of The Sea (Pirates Of The Sea cover)
Shipwrecked
Nancy The Tavern Wench
Back Through Time
Wenches & Mead
Midget Saw
Keelhauled
Rumpelkombo
Captain Morgan’s Revenge
Rum
Shipwrecked (Drop Goblin remix)