Year: 2022
Total Time: 42.58
Label: Napalm Records

In their 18 years of career (plus their career as BATTLEHEART), we are already familiar with the “troll” attitude that ALESTORM have, without missing any opportunity to show it in every way possible, either on social media or in live performances.

So, when the title of the new album “Seventh Rum Of A Seventh Rum” was announced, I thought ALESTORM were infected with some sort of “Iron Maiden virus”, something that many would certainly think. Fortunately, I quickly realized that I was wrong, it has nothing to do with “Seventh son of a seventh son” and they are just trolling us.

Here we are dealing with the seventh full length album of the Scottish pirates. By the way, we had the opportunity to watch them live in Greece twice, in Thessaloniki and Athens, on July 11th and 12th 2022 respectively. You can click HERE to read the THEGALLERY.GR’s live report concerning ALESTORM’s concert in Athens.

In this new album the band sounds refreshed and ready for new adventures. Being a fan of this particular band I will try to be as objective as I can…

With a total duration of almost 43 minutes or 2 hours (*I will explain later…) and containing 11 compositions, the result is relatively average to good . Certainly it is not their “Seventh son of a seventh son”, but in general it has very nice tracks, pleasant to hear, with memorable melodies which are what we need for concerts.

Let’s quickly get over with two compositions the band backtracked out of the way. First “Return to Tortuga”, which is “Tortuga” from the previous record, re-arranged with more epic and heavy-metal elements, since the original is composed with electronic and hip-hop elements. And second the “Wooden Leg Part III” that keeps the foundations of the two previous parts but with changes from slow to faster tempo, melodic guitars fillings as well as chilling solos, managing to become more melancholic and nostalgic. Unfortunately it is difficult to be a sing-along track because it contains lyrics in Spanish and Japanese!!!!!

“Magellan’s expedition” starts the record with all the familiar epic and folk elements we are used to. The album continues with two equally nice compositions with stunning solos and trumpet additions to the rhythm melodies. Then “P.A.R.T.Y.” completely changes our mood and is probably one of the band’s favorites as it is permanently on the set list along with “Magellan’s expedition”. “Under Black Banners” is probably the definition of Power Metal while “Magyarország¨, which I can not even pronounce, is the gang’s stop for Pálinka (traditional drink) in Hungary. Though I don’t know how they even got there, since Hungary is a country in central Europe surrounded completely by dry land…

Generally the rest of the album is a Power Metal structure with fast and heavy tracks with the exception of “Come to Brazil” which is a punk-metal two-minuter.

Summing up, we have in our hands a fairly good record, in the same tracks we are used to by the band, with folk elements, heavy, melodic and with several sing-along tracks. Someone might wonder, how long they will continue that very same pattern: “Argh!!! We’re pirates, we steal, and we drink rum” and all that… My personal and non-objective opinion this time is that we’re talking about one of the fastest rising band on the planet right now, with essentially (only!!!) 12 years of presence, with seven records, one better than the other in general, with an incredibly fanatical and loyal audience and sold-out concerts all over the world.

The band shows us that they work hard; with quality and above all that they really like what they do. So let them keep doing whatever they do, cause they are doing it well!!!

*It should be mentioned that the album is also released in a collector’s (deluxe) edition which contains all the tracks arranged in two other formats. One acoustic version and another one in which we hear dogs barking on the vocal melodies! It doesn’t feel strange at all, they’ve done it before…

Rating: 7,5/10
Editor: Marios Tsampazoglou
Related Link: ALESTORM – Official Page