Rating: 9/10
Release: 3 December 2021
Label: Napalm Records

The Swedish Shanty/Pirate Folk outfit Ye Banished Privateers crawled through the docks and bars and gathered a real ‘different’ Christmas feeling. This conspiracy lead to an album with 11 swashbuckling Christmas shanties.
Are you unfamiliar with Ye Banished Privateers? You should listen some. “I’m not into pirates” you might say, still give it a try. This is different from all pirate rock and metal bands you know. Well, to be honest it isn’t even metal, rock at it’s best. It’s shanty 2.0.
The band counts numerous members and sounds like a shanty choir, but much nicer. Their songs are carefully build together to create a pirate mess. And are you into pirates? Well, this is sure one for you too.
Ye Banished Privateers managed to really give traditional Christmas songs a nice make-over. The lyrics are re-written with a lot of humor. But despite the fact you recognize the songs, you barely have close your eyes to imagine you’re walking visiting the bars at the docks a few hundred years back.

´Tis the jolliest of seasons! But it draws the listener into a dark underworld of blood and bones as well. Maybe it sounds a bit cheesy when you rework ‘Oh Christmas Tree’ into ‘Oh Cannonball’ and ‘Little Drummer Boy’ in ‘Little Rummer Boy’, but I can assure you it doesn’t sound cheesy at all. The lyrics are really funny and completely fitting the pirate feel of the album.
When you’re familiar with Ye Banished Privateers you already know the band is utterly skilled in the shanty way of singing. The voices are skillfully mixed and you can enjoy their skills fully in songs like ‘Drawn and Quartered’.

This album is for everyone. Do you like pirates, you will like it for sure. You don’t like pirates? You may surely like this, because it’s so different and unique. Do you like Christmas, you sure will like this. You don’t like Christmas, well give this one a try, because you can easily use this in your crusade against the pure Christmas tradition. You have a good sense of humor, you will like it. You don’t have a sense of humor…..
… Nay, you won’t like this. Go home and pity yourself!
But I can advise you, do as I did and buy this album at once: Christmas won’t be the same!

Tracklist

1. Ring the Bells 3:48
2. It Came to Bloody Pass 2:46
3. Deck and Hull 2:37
4. Twelve Days of Christmas 5:19
5. Sulphur Ahoy 2:48
6. Little Rummer Boy 3:27
7. Oh Cannonball 4:39
8. Festival Days 1:10
9. Drawn and Quartered 2:41
10. Carol of Bellows 3:38
11. Away in the gutter 2:49