ALESTORM interview on Power Metal, crowd surfing and reverse Spinal Tap'ing themselves

if you've ever heard the phrase pirate metal before then you already know it's a genre of music synonymous with a alestorm these booze drenched wench hungry musicians have been sailing the sea since 2008 winning over international audiences with their brand of cheeky pirate medal today I sit down with creative force guitar player and frontman of the band christopher bohse to discuss life on the high seas Chris thanks for meeting with me today it's a pleasure welcome to the Bangor hangar it's a cozy little room you've got here it's very nice yeah well I mean it's massive but I got to excuse this massive it's the magic of the internet yeah I'm really excited to talk to you today about music and some silly stuff you know I think I'm talking to the right dude then I enjoy music and the silly stuff perfect the two my favorite things here at Bangor were super into genres and subgenres and even my crew genre musically Alestorm you got elements of like thrash metal and there's some folk stuff going on and there's some pop stuff going on yeah where do you kind of place yourself genre wise I mean this band has sort of jumped across the world and genres like since we started like in fact only very original ancient days ever we started this band we wanted to just be a straight-up power metal band you know but then we very quickly realized that we're not talented and none of us can sing and folk metals kind of fun and drinking's awesome so we became a folk metal band and then there was this sort of occasional forays and say like it's a thrash metal with like you know oh let's do that token too fast song on the album that just sounds like you know a shitty old Metallica riff whatever and recently we've decided it's fun to sell out and write dumb pop music so you know it's a bit of everything but so party folk power metal yeah that's where we are right now party folk power metal party folk power metal like putting it on the heavy metal tree cool let's talk about the obvious moniker of pirate metal though do you view the pirate metal thing as a standalone genre and like does it have any defining characteristics more than singing about plundering booty and drinking rum I mean yeah it's one of these debates you see people on line like nerds going I'm not a pirate metal bands and don't be silly there's no such it's like yeah there's not really such a thing but you know there's I guess it's like a micro genre because there are bands who do what we do is like very much that's sort of accordion oompa thing with so a bit of violins and this sort of Yoho sort of thing to it so perhaps there is a pirate metal genre but they need to get pirate metal bands like you swashbuckle from new jersey they're just a death grind sort of thrash bands like this they have nothing in common with us apart from they say you own their looks it's definitely a lyrical yawn morning else when it comes to the live show you guys are known to be quite over-the-top you can pretty much command an audience anywhere in the world for example I'm very much retired from moshing or doing anything fun at shows and in 2018 at the 70,000 tons of metal I found myself crowd surfing at your show it has not happened since and it had been a million years since it happened before that how important is it to you to deliver that element of fun show every night and what goes into making sure that you get everyone off the [ __ ] ground well it's the prize it's the most important thing like we're not on stage to be you know Paragons of musicianship you know we're all right I guess we can play our songs if people aren't having fun it feels kind of weird it's like a fury that's how that's how a judges show is I did people go off was it absolutely a big party and if it is that's a good show for us you know it's we play sort of fun catchy music it's you know there's there's nothing cerebral about it just want people to come along and you know have a great time and it's but we've been had a lot of festivals we've already set the festival record for the biggest number of crowd surfers köppen hell festival in denmark recently last year we played the second stage but we had the most crowd servers that ever had like it was seriously non-stop I think 200 or something over the course of the show so you kind of feel bad for the people in the front row but you know they were they know what they're getting him for when they come to a Halestorm show and get in the front you just could have their heads permanently just squished by humans yeah it's like yeah the the rowing and we're out surfing and rowing that's a cool and people always get down and they do the rojo rowing to a song sometimes they do it to the wrong song like there's obviously there's nice big slow songs where it's cool to get there and go dude you didn't do well then sometimes we're about to play like a super fast one then they sit down and they start doing this is like that's just not how you row a ship the ships not not even anywhere heavy metal is off viewed as a super serious very serious hmm and I'm sure you've dealt with fair share of criticisms down one or two criticisms all day yeah so prominent in heavy metal for everything to be so serious and dark and I noticed that there's none of that really with al storm is it wrong me to assume that you're very cheeky and don't take yourselves that's yeah exactly that's for us completely right no because we're not serious people we're always having a laugh and shooting the [ __ ] I would find it really difficult to go onstage and put on this sort of persona of being like I'm some evil stoic pirate captain I would find that difficult you know can you meet fans put on this put on your metal face and like pretend to be someone you're not I don't like bullshitting people you know what we are who we are on stage off stage it's from the same people there's lots of fun bands yeah there's there are a lot of fun bands but I do find that even the fun bands who do sing about drinking and partying and fun [ __ ] like really take themselves very [ __ ] serious yeah sometimes people think that all oil storm you just a parody band you're like taking the piss out of metals like no one knows we're all very much heavy metal fans we know our [ __ ] and we like our [ __ ] we're not here to you know make fun of this we're just doing it well with a light-hearted attitude let's let's go back to the beginning it started out as an idea for a straight power metal band you wrote one song about pirates and it was just was that it's like wouldn't it be cool if we this band we just like you know we just shred the gnar all the time I was like that's six solos and things so that was the original thing that I like let's just be the most talented band I like to say very quickly we realize who weren't that talented you know we could we could twiddle twiddle a bit but that was it and then I'd like oh hey I make as I've written this song it's about pirates it was a song called heavy metal pirates and it was just this dumb song I'd written because I just like writing songs about stuff like a great song about wizards one day he's something with pirates the next day a song about you know blowing up Hitler with nuclear missiles and stuff just whatever songs about anything that was the one that stuck was the one about pirates you know this badge could have gone to weird different places if I'd come to the rehearsal with a different song that day but her pirates is what it became and then before we knew all our songs our were pirates we played our first gig and the entire crowd was dressed as pirates and we're like okay we're uh we're a pirate bad now I guess cool that's our thing but was there ever like a moment with the original lineup like a pushback moment where you're BAM edge like okay guys we can't go too deep into this pirate thing it was everyone on board everyone was just so on board because like you know that first show we did it was huge I think they just wanted to be in a band that people liked so they were cool with whatever here being confined to pirate themes I've heard you say that giving yourself restrictions opens up creativity it does can you elaborate on that and how it directly affects your writing process we live in a world where oversaturated with everything I'm like especially you know and technology is so good you know you can sit down at your computer I do have everything at your disposal you have you know you could make a perfect orchestra you can make a Gregorian choir sing whenever you want press a few buttons and have perfect guitar tracks of everything it's hard to create when you've got every possibility you know you have to set yourself some buttons some constraints and then when you work or and that I feel like it's a good nucleus to do something different I don't see shoehorn yourself but when you could give yourself these limits you forced yourself to be creative in other ways most people are always trying to explore creativity thinking outside the box versus I'm getting this idea that perhaps you really do enjoy thinking inside yeah yeah you build a box but then you find a weird way to kind of crawl outside it then back through the other end you know you know that's how you get cool stuff I like that you sing a lot about wrong and me in drinking Hawaii ahoy and I gotta ask drinking rum on tour is not always the most fun to keep up all night and puking on the bus is a hard no so what is the drink of choice for ales storm on the road you know I used to like her room nice to think Rome was an interesting miss Bert aftershow I'd go into the audience a guy hey 6a Dale stone can I buy you a shot of rum I'm like can't say no no and this guy is just having the best night of his life sec sure I'll do a shot of rum with you and then he turn around then someone else goes hey Chris I've also bought you a shot at robbing oh my god so there there I've been shows when just just non-stop people feeding you robber as you can understand you've got very very sick of rum very quickly we've mellowed out of it you know we still like a drink on stage the white wine white wine it's too old for all of this nonsense pirates don't age man ah dude glory Hammer yes bottle Angus oh God Lord tennis what gb [ __ ] Bob and the [ __ ] pirates okay yes clearly your sense of humor is not just reserved for ales Torme clearly someone's looked up my profile of metal archives you know I did my due diligence I always do talk to me about the role that humor and comedy and lightheartedness plays a mail storm I've tried to write serious songs I've tried to sit down like I'm gonna write a song but my feelings and my emotions and you know darkness misery like I'd love to be like you know someone that could write some absolutely crazy cerebral song that's all like wow and makes people go this guy is the future of metal it's so intelligent but like I can't sit down and go these lyrics are dumb I rhyme rum with bomb instead that'd be better it's I do like making music so every time I start a new band it always ends up stupid but it seems like you're the kind of dude that all the bands you're in you're the primary songwriter you know you seem to be the founder of most of these bands and the creative force like are you the type of person that's constantly cranking out new music and just doing stuff like you've always have to have creative output my problem is I can't sing I do sing but I can't and I'm not really good at stuff like I can play the keyboards a little bit I can sing a little bit can't play the guitar I like to surround myself with people who can were really good instruments and just make them do all the cool stuff and I'll just sit in the back and you pull the strings it's so speaking of instruments how the hell do you decide to play the keytar and would you consider that your primary instrument I suppose it is I suppose I'm a professional guitar player which is the whole thing to say again back when this band started and a whole thing of they wanted to be the most over-the-top super ludicrous you know squiggly squiggly band Wow nothing would be more over the top than having a keytar and that became my thing is just me on a keto it's like a bit long it's the 80s ha ha ha I eventually became the singer of the band and it just became the most perfect thing to have because you know singing and playing the keyboard that's dumb you step the back doing this you know you can't front a band like that so it's it's it's the perfect I've seen you just to sing and you know play like a guitar and we're in the stage it's weird how I'm people have just accepted it this is this is what I mean watching past interviews you've done in like no one [ __ ] I know it's you about the keytar it's weirdest weirdest [ __ ] no wonder there's like maybe two other people play one like um I think the guy from Sonata Arctica plays one and sometimes the keyboard player of ghosts brings like wow he's got you know yeah they make this you expect to come and play all the freaking time non-stop like for 90 minutes while singing this again whatever that's just a old so much is what we do I think everything else would do that so stupid has just outshines that as it go yeah it's that's the least you worry the ski tourism eight-foot duck behind you you know you know you've achieved absolute ridiculousness when the keytar is the most normal thing no it's very strange your music videos are over-the-top we've got the crazy stage show the dock you've mentioned clearly the visual element of your art is very important to you as well do you spend as much time sort of crafting the visual accompaniment as you do the music no we really should I feel like we could put more effort and it all just happened accidentally like most things in this band that we just have this ridiculously a visual show of brightness and happiness and joy well the amount of inflatable Ducks you're going through on tour you're gonna have to open your own Holdings company to start manufacturing inflatable ducks it was getting a bit hairy over the summer because I think we bought every single duck that existed you know there's not much of a market for eight-foot-tall ducks as you can imagine so this company I guess they've made like maybe a hundred of them we'd bought them all and we'd thrown them all to the crowd and rip them to shreds I said yes all right guys there's no ducks left talk to some random guy in China and said hey can you like make us a duck and make it like nine foot tall and make it look like a pirate yeah whatever we can do that ego and then they ship does these ducks unfortunately we did a sort of a I want to call a reverse spinal tap you know they had that Stonehenge monument is really small yeah the material they're made from it's so heavy duty these things weigh about 30 kilograms is a two-person lift to pick up these man so as we can't throw these into the crowd because they're heavy we can kill someone kill someone would die but we have ducks again thankfully yay the duck is back which scene do you find embraces hailstorm the most is it like the the European folk metal scene or guess the folk metal scene is that are at our closest they like bands like you know choice ass control and suffer korpiklaani corner clowny but I feel like we on the edge of that it's I think we're a bit too stupid for some of them and not not Heritage II enough you know or the Ren Faire yeah every day we're possibly the only band in the world who has played Vans Warped Tour and also has played a medieval festival in a castle in Germany it's like somehow we straddle these two worlds it's interesting that you mentioned Warped Tour because I wanted to ask you about that do you think that an ability to win over crowds like a warped or crowd but then also play to your standard metal audiences that you do to festival is that part of the the key to success here where they'll storm is that mass appeal I think it's we can't appeal to everyone in certain ways but for some people we're the heaviest bad they like and for some people were the lightest band they like so it's kind of cool we can we can jump between these worlds and still you know keep busy play shows all the time we go to the Warped or play Festival in a castle go to Australia a place and thing go to Japan and play some other thing and you'd all jump across these different scenes they play with different kinds of bands and it's cool just being able to do all these different things like play in different worlds and still do what we do you

Channel: BANGERTV - All Metal

Views: 75,934

Keywords: BangerTV, Banger TV, Metal Evolution, Lock Horns, Metal documentaries, pirate metal, alestorm, power metal, folk metal, daniel dekay, bangertv interview, metal band interview, metal interview, sam dunn, global metal, headbangers journey, Overkill Reviews, metal reviews, exciter

Id: M1nrUmQs-K0

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 21 2020