With the news breaking that Scottish pirate metallers Alestorm were about to pillage Australian shores for a seventh time, we dispatched our own suave swashbuckler, Leeno Dee, for a chat with band founder Chris Bowes to see how the band are faring…

Ahoy Chris, how are you? “Good mate, good!”

Where are you right now? “I’m in Switzerland, it’s been a bit of a chaotic morning. I think I was supposed to have an interview before you but I woke up late, and I was doin’ a shit, and then I couldn’t get the wifi working and I was like ‘ah fuck it, its all going wrong’ (laughs). But I got here just in time for this!

How did you get yourself together with all of those obstacles? “Ah…it’s just…I’m a very disorganised person, never mind…it’s all fine. I’m in the room, I found Wifi, I’ve got a quiet space to do this-we’re good!”

Well…look at the bright side ,you missed the other guy but you’ve got me! “Thats all that matters!”

So, you’re currently on tour, yes? “Yes”.

How long have you been on this run then? “Actually, this might be pretty much the mid point of this tour. It started January the 8th and ends on February the 9th. It’s big silly-you’ve got Paganfest Europe and it’s like us and a bunch of other like, kinda folk metal pagan bands, and it’s been good, I think it’s actually gonna be our biggest tour ever which is cool.But, yeah, good times, big shows, some of our biggest shows, keeping it very chilled though”.

Where to next after Switzerland? “(Reading his tour book) tomorrow we’re ,oh god, (rubs forehead)…it’s in a place called Geiselwind, Germany”.

Sorry I didn’t quite catch that…? “(In strident German accent) GEISELVIND!”

Ah. Geiselwind. Got it! “Dude, it’s like a gas station in the middle of nowhere, its like a truck stop, with a venue. Literally there’s not a city for like a hundred kilometres around. Some guy decided to build a venue and for some reason bands go there all the time and its always insane, like, nobody comes to the show, its grim, you’ve got a Maccas and a KFC and that’s it. And its …Oh god…(rubbing eyes)… I’m going to be doing more of these interviews tomorrow so I’m gonna be so fucking angry and raging at all these interviewers ‘cos (laughing) its gonna be miserable but… (smiling) never mind. Its…today its OK at least. I can accept Switzerland”.

Well, you’re smiling now anyway…thats what matters… “Yup”.

You’re the founder of Alestorm ,been a long haul from that beginning right? (I decide to take the piss a little with Chris) So then how does it feel, starting with the band way back in the mid to late eighties? “(Laughing loudly) Dude! Come on! When I was born?! (still laughing). When I was a baby (still laughing)…came out of the womb playing a keytar in ’86 (more laughter).

OK, just messin’ with you-so really, 2004 was the start yes? And you’ve experienced a lot of changes over the years. “Yeah…we often talk about this, I think the official start date was 2006-because for the first two years it was just a piss about – it wasn’t really a band yet, until we actually released something in 2006 – that’s when it became real. It’s weird, because I’ve literally never done anything else with my life. So, I can’t even think of ‘oh, the before times’ or ‘what did I do differently?’. It’s just what I do…I do Pirates…and that’s it. It consumed my entire life.And its kinda terrifying!”

You know the title of this piece is now going to have to be ‘Chris Bowes – I Do Pirates’, right? Can’t be avoided. “(Cracks up laughing) yeah! Put in brackets ‘not in the bum’! (Both laughing). I think we’ve all… everyone in the band has gotten used to that this is what we do with ourselves.And everyone’s very professional about it so… it just feels normal? Does that sound weird? I know that it shouldn’t feel normal, its not a very normal way of life, but it just feels (shrugs) like what you do. You get up in the morning, you go to Switzerland, you play a show. Its just life”.  (smiles).

Its your normal though, that’s the thing. So its OK. “Yeah. But its terrifying!”

Terrifying- but all these years later you’re obviously still enjoying it, still getting a buzz out of it. “Yeah! The great thing is when we do play shows the crowd does go mental yeah. And that’s great
because, I see a lot of bands, right, and they go onstage and the crowds’ just (pulls a blank expression) staring at them…and I’m like, fuck, that can not be fun, that must really grind you down
after a while. Our shows are mental. Our fans are nuts, they’re like, everyones backflipping over each other in the mosh pit and crowd surfing and you can tell they’re enjoying it which is nice.
I mean thats what keeps it going for me, we do shit that people enjoy and that’s like, fuck yeah, y’know? I don’t wanna be one of these bands that (trails off)… well, I don’t write music for myself,
right, y’know? If I write a song and I like it, chances are no one else is gonna like it (laughs). And I know its a bad thing to say you chase what people like, I’m not really chasing what I think people
will like, I just write stuff and hope people like it.’Cos thats all that keeps me going, is like you know people enjoying the songs and having a nice time. ‘Cos its always bad to like, chase trends or
whatever-you should never fall into that trap. I think I just got lucky that the kind of stuff that I enjoy writing-‘cos I do enjoy writing songs- is what people like listening to. One of these days what I like writing and what people like listening to is gonna drift apart and that’s gonna be a sad day. But until then, fuck it, enjoy it!”

Over the life of the band you’ve had a lot of line up changes- how difficult has it been to find people to come into the band who get the concept and share your view on Alestorm from a deeper level than just being musicians who can do the gig? “Yeah. Although I think for the last ten years now it (the line up) has been totally constant. The problem was at the start of the band we accidentally got famous, and at the time it was just me and a bunch of local kids playing whatever and it kinda turns out that some people don’t actually wanna be in a full time band. Some people are a bit shit at their instruments and cant keep up with the pace of the songs. Especially when we got started, we didn’t really know many people, we didn’t have this network like ‘I know this world class drummer’ or ‘I know this amazing keyboard player’ or whatever you know, we couldn’t just grab people from around the word to be in the band. We were stuck with whoever we knew in our small local circle which was… as I’m sure you’re aware, the Scottish metal scene isn’t exactly overflowing with sick metal bands with pro musicians so it was a struggle to find people at first. Eventually we found all these people who actually were good at their instruments and were well adjusted enough to spend most of their lives on a bus in Switzerland. So it just takes time finding that really. I think after the chaos of the first five or so years of this band its been super smooth sailing. Everyones one hundred per cent into it. Its all so fucking pro. We get up, everyone does their own thing, we get onstage every night and we know everyone’s gonna play perfectly, its gonna be sick, everyone knows what they’re doing. It’s just smooth, it’s just really nice these days”.

Are you constantly writing or do you decide when its time for an album and knuckle down to do it? “Yeah for the most part it’s ‘oh fuck it’s been so long since the last album I should probably write
something and you get the lads together and you say ‘Right! Lets write some fucking songs!’ The problem is I’ve got so many stupid side projects going on… so as soon as I finish writing an
Alestorm album I’m like right, don’t wanna do that again for at least two years, time to work on something else. So I’ve actually just finished writing the latest album- we actually recorded it last
month in December and that’s gonna come out later this year”.

The Thunderfist Chronicles. “Yeah! How do people know this shit? Wow”.

(Me laughing) There’s this thing called ‘Google’ you can find on this thing called the ‘Internet’… “(Laughing) Yeah I know… but sometimes I think, do people even notice that stuff ‘cos we made a
little announcement about that like last month in the studio and you only get like ten comments saying ‘wow’ and ‘cool’ and ‘can’t wait’. But that is the title…yep, The Thunderfist Chronicles, its gonna be good… I wanna say its a stupid album but it’s a lot… I don’t wanna be that guy that says (makes a heavy metal fist) oh this album is a lot heavier than our last album but I think this time ‘round its more metal riffs and… its a lot less disco. (Looks confused) But its fucking still disco… (exasperated) I don’t know what its like! It’s certainly good.I think it’s great. Whatever. I hate having to describe it. Its cool. But anyway, yeah, once I get sick of writing Alestorm shit I move on to a different band for a year and so right now I think I’m gonna think about writing a Gloryhammer album. I really want to start a stupid side project. I don’t know what though. I need a new band, I need something new, to do it myself. I might wanna start a local band, y’know just me and some kids playing pub gigs. I wanna be a support band for a change, that’d be fun”.

How many other things are you currently involved in? “Well Gloryhammer. A new album I could churn out some power metal for… then we’ve got this other band called Wizardthrone, I wanna do more of that. It’s kinda more extreme metal. I don’t know…I just wanna make music. It’s a weird feeling…I know I say I love doing this but sometimes you get sick of playing giant shows, like all these giant headline festivals, whatever. I really wanna play as a shitty opening band for a change. I’ll write some bad songs and just start a bad band. You know…just open up…”

Regarding the forthcoming new album…when did you begin working on it? “Last April or May we released this EP Voyage of the Dead Marauder and I thought great, that’ll keep us going for a while, and then I suddenly just started writing songs, and I was like ‘oh fuck, it’s happening again’.And then it got to like about September last year and I said to the guys, “here, should we do an album?” And they were like ‘eeerrr,do we have to?’ And I was like ‘yeah! We do!’ And we realised we had a few weeks spare in December and we were like fuck it, we’re gonna do it in December. We’re gonna record, mix an album. It was a very last minute thing. And I just spent the last couple of months- ‘cos by that point I realised I had maybe two or three half songs and I’m like fuck it-thats all you need. I started writing and this album appeared. I was like (surprised face) fuck yeah, I’ve got an album! So we threw that together in December and our producer Lasse Lammert is currently working on it right now and I’m hoping in the next week or two he’ll send us some test mixes of stuff so we’ll be really excited to hear if it sounds good. I have no idea how its
gonna sound! Obviously I can hear it in my head but when I might hear it in real life for the first time I might be like ooh what was that? Its shit!”

So… in progress then. “Yeah, working on that. We’ve got all the album artwork, we’ve gotta take some photos, we’ve already made one and a half videos. So we’re sort of working on stuff. Yeah. I’m excited for this. I think its different to the usual Alestorm stuff. Its more concept album-y. Its quite heavy. One of the songs is over seventeen minutes long. Its very odd”.

How about the USA? Do they get the pirate thing over there?  “I think they’re too much into the pirate thing over there…they think we’re some renaissance fair dress up band and we’re like nah mate, we’re a metal band that just has songs about pirates and they’re like (rolls eyes) oh, sorry. But yeah, we’re gonna head over there at the end of this tour. We try to go everywhere every couple of years, make sure they don’t forget about us. Something to do with your time”.

You must have had some funny incidents on tour yes? “Yes! Definitely a couple of times we’ve been booked for a festival and they’ve thought we were some authentic seventeenth century sea faring pirate troupe. We played this medieval festival in Germany where everyone was dressed as knights, y’know, and old school shit- Vikings and things. So we thought-oh god! They think we’re a folk band. So… we all got dressed up as life guards, y’know, little red shorts, yellow shirts and ran onstage to the Baywatch theme holding those little mini surfboards and we threw like thousands of lifeguard whistles into the crowd. So the entire festival everyone walked around- well, all you heard was people blowing whistles.Totally ruining the medieval atmosphere-(both laughing) it was great fun!”

You’ve been coming to Australia now since 2010 and must be six or seven tours in by now… “Yeah. Its nuts, I can’t think there’s many metal bands that have toured Australia more than us. Seventh
time coming up I think? Anyway, a lot, fucking a lot!”

The first tour I remember you guys were all very slick and swish, all flowing hair and white pirate shirts… “I don’t know if we were wearing the pirate shirts…but we definitely had more hair. And were definitely younger.(Laughing). We were fucking chaos back then.That was back in the age of this band when we were a bit shit live. But obviously there was the energy, there was the atmosphere all the kids were drunk and going crazy. But now its like- fucking, the show is just slick as fuck and everything sounds great. Gonna be some nice shows, mate. Also, this is our first time bringing over an international support band. We’ve got Nekrogoblikon from the USA, cos usually we just stick to local but we’re trying to like, bring it up a notch”.

Nekrogoblikon? “Yeah, they’re American, they’re a Goblin band. Their singer is a Goblin. And its good stuff. Usually we just tour with Aussie local bands only but this time we thought fuck it, lets go big. And these will be hopefully our biggest shows ever in Australia. More of the same but bigger. Every show gets better than the last one, the production gets better, the songs get better, we get better. Hopefully the crowd gets better. But thats on YOU guys to sort that part out”.

And its gonna be a laugh.

ALESTORM with NEKROGOBLIKON performing at:
Feb 25th – Perth, Metropolis Fremantle
Feb 27th – Adelaide, The Gov
Feb 28th – Melbourne, The Forum
March 1st – Sydney, Roundhouse
March 2nd – Canberra, The Baso
March 4th – Brisbane, Princess Theatre

ALESTORM only performing at:
March 7th – Auckland, Galatos
March 8th – Wellington, San Fran