CD REVIEW: LAGERSTEIN – All For Rum & Rum For All

Shane | 23 February 2016 | Reply

CD REVIEW: LAGERSTEIN – All For Rum & Rum For All
Independent
1 February, 2016
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8 ½ /10

Remember that time you and your best mates got stupidly drunk, then dragged out whatever instruments (or cardboard boxes, pots & pans or whatever) you could find to jam out a succession of written-on-the-spot ditties about getting stupidly drunk and doing the sort of things you do when you’re stupidly drunk?

No? Well, my friends did – and very punk it was, too. Lagerstein, however, took their foolish antics several steps further, learnt to play extremely well, and properly recorded their tales of rum-sodden piratical adventures. And here we have All For Rum & Rum For All, album number two from these (entirely appropriately) Queensland reprobates.

Pirate Metal seems an odd name for a genre: to me it references the lyrical subject matter and not the music, which in this case is a neat hybrid of heavy rock with some thrashy elements, and a more Celtic, folk metal sound.

What it entirely fails to capture, also, is that it is FUN! From start to finish the tales told by vocalist Captain Gregarrr, guitarists The Majestic Beast & Neil Rummy Rackers, bassist & tin whistler The Immobilizer, drummer Old Mate Dazzel, keytarist/violinist/honkey tonk pianist Mother Junkst and keyboardist Jacob, The Fiercest Pirate In All The Caribbean are hilarious, engaging, rollicking and awesome to sing along to.

The song titles will tell you all you need to know about the subject matter: Raise Your Steins, Drink The Rum, Jungle Juice, Down The Hatch, Land of Bundy and Fountain Of Rum, for instance. It’s a fair bet these lads like an icy cold beverage or two, and teetotallers will be treated with distrust.

It all adds up to good, good times, and with a lavishly appointed cover, and an insert featuring full lyrics and a bloody treasure map fer rum’s sake, there’d better not be anyone casting aspersions upon this album, or they’ll be keelhauled like the scurvy dog they are. Get it, it’s great.