  Tonight Piratefest hit London. The queue of fans outside the venue, many dressed as pirates, long before the doors opened showed that Alestorm are certainly popular with the fans despite some critics dismissing them as a joke that should have gone away after the first album or two. Happily Alestorm show no sign of quitting, having recently released their latest album, Sunset on the golden age. Their latest tour, Piratefest, brings together a full lineup of pirate themed metal bands, and it's proving popular - with something like 19 uk dates, all selling well, and several including tonight having sold out weeks ago, the fans are taking the chance to enjoy a drunken night of pirate metal.
Rainbowdragoneyes was first up. It's an unusual act - it's one man singing along to music. More specifically, he sings along to music from a Nintendo game boy. The music consists of music from various games. If you think that sounds strange then you're right - it is. I'm really not sure what to make of it - it's equally good and shit at the same time
Next up were Red Rum with some proper pirate metal. The East Midlands based band play music that could be described as folk metal but with a pirate theme, and right from the start they impressed me far more than Rainbowdragoneyes could ever hope to - in fact Red Rum impressed me enough that I bought their EP from the merch stand after their set. They certainly went down well with the crowd too and even had quite a few people dancing during their set. A great performance that really got the crowd warmed up for Lagerstein.
Australian band Lagerstein were next up. They fill the stage - there are 7 or 8 of them, and that's before you allow for the man mountain of a bass player they call The Immobiliser who takes up a good chunk of the stage by himself.
Musically they take what Red Rum did and take it up a notch with lots of piratey drinking songs. It's damn good stuff, and I'd certainly recommend fans of Alestorm to check them out.
Finally it was the turn of the headliners - Alestorm. Unless you're dead inside, it's impossible to go to an Alestorm gig and not enjoy yourself, and it was clear that the crowd were definitely having a good night (helped no doubt by copious quantities of alcohol), and we'd only got to the second song before the first crowd surfer of the night came over for security to catch. Tonight's set is a great mix of old and new with several songs from the new album being played alongside fan favourites such as "Keelhauled". Early on, the single from the new album, "Drink" was greeted with particularly loud cheers and has clearly already become a favourite of many fans.
Rather than playing the whole set themselves, they brought on a few guests from the other bands for various songs - for "Wooden leg" the band were joined by Eric Brown (Rainbowdragoneyes), For "Nancy the tavern wench" Captain Gregaaarr from Lagerstein joined them! and during the encore, for the Taio Cruz cover, Hangover, Sam from Red Rum joined them to play acoustic guitar, and The Immobiliser joined in on guest vocals.
This really was a great night, and I could certainly see why it was sold out. It was nice while watching the support bands to see Alestorm singer/mastermind Chris Bowes out in the crowd watching the bands, talking to fans, and enjoying a drink or two - it's not often you see a headliner playing a venue this size being so accessible to the fans.
Alestorm are always great live - I've seen them several times and always enjoyed their gigs, so the fact they were brilliant tonight didn't come as a surprise to me, but what did impress me was how good Lagerstein and Red Rum are - two bands I definitely want to see more of in the future.
Setlist:
Walk the plank
The sunk'n Norwegian
Drink
Over the seas
Shipwrecked
Magnetic north
Back through time
Nancy the tavern wench
Midget saw
Keelhauled
Rumpelkombo
Pirate song
Wooden leg
Wenches and mead
Encore:
1471 (The battle of Cartagena)
Hangover
Captain Morgan's revenge
Rum
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