ALBUM REVIEW: Captain Morgan’s Revenge (10th Anniversary Edition) – Alestorm

To celebrate the release of their very first record, ALESTORM are set to drop a 10 year anniversary edition of Captain Morgan’s Revenge. The remastered record comes just nine months after the band released their fifth studio album, No Grave But The Sea, and came as a surprise announcement not long after.

There’s no changes to the running order from the original, so the anniversary edition begins with Over The Seas. The only main difference to the sound from the first album is there appears to be more emphasis on the keyboards, which are much more prominent, and there are more backing vocals – front-man Chris Bowes sounding no different to any of ALESTORM‘s previous records.

This pretty much seems to be the same throughout the record, although there are a couple of tracks which have had more significant changes compared to the others, for example Death Before The Mast, which has become heavier in its overall sound with more emphasis being put on the guitar and bass to add more of a metal element to it. The other track which seems to have taken a lot more remastering is Wenches and Mead, arguably one of the band’s better tracks across their discography. The tempo during the instrumental sections is a tad slower than the original, before quickly building back up again during the vocals, but still gets you in the party spirit.

While there hasn’t been a great deal of editing to the sound, which is good as you don’t want a remaster to stray too far from the original, the anniversary edition comes with a live CD from the band’s 2015 appearance at Summer Breeze Festival. It is a clever move from the band to kill two birds with one stone, rather than releasing two separate CDs, but that really is the only selling point of the anniversary edition.

There are subtle differences throughout the record that avid ALESTORM fans may notice compared to casual listeners who have only heard the original version a couple of times, but nothing too drastic apart from the two examples mentioned above.

Anyone who is a fan of ALESTORM are the most likely to pick up the 10 year anniversary edition of Captain Morgan’s Revenge to go with the rest of the discography, but for anyone who has only given them a fleeting listen then it’s not really viable to shell out for this version.

Rating: 7/10

Captain Morgan’s Revenge 10th Anniversary Edition is set for release on January 26th via Napalm Records.

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