02.06.2018 Alestorm

FortaRock

Goffertpark Nijmegen (Netherlands)

It was already very crowded in front of the Main Stage because the first highlight of the day should take place. But when one takes a look at the stage there is unavoidable the question: Am I really at a metal festival or at a children’s birthday party? In the middle of the stage there was a huge inflatable rubber duck, the banner was showing ducks with banana bodies and everything was kept in candy like colors.
No question: Alestorm is ready to take the crowd with them on big foray and so they storm the stage right in time by the sounds of “Keelhauled” with band mastermind Christopher Bowes leading the way. This piece should not be the only one of the legendary debut album “Captain Morgan’s Revenge”, as it is celebrating its 10th anniversary and to honor this it is released to the market again in a new remaster quality. The audience partied hard directly from the start of the first song and it is extremely impressive if some 1000 throats are roaring the songs loudly. One beer after the other was emptied on stage and also in front of it permanently beer cups were flying around. Someone is “boating” across the crowd (in Germany unthinkable but at the Netherlands usual 😊) and already quite early at the beginning suddenly half of the crowd sits down on the ground starting to row. Wicked!
Everything was still a little bit uncoordinated so it was repeated a little bit later under instructions of Bowes and nearly everybody(!) was joining. The usual crackers about pirates and other themes out of this atmosphere lead the mood to the boiling point. You could really feel that the band was really keen on playing this gig. No matter if it was guitarist Máté Bodor who was drawing attention to himself by posing or also the less remarkable acting allies Elliot Vernon on Keyboard, Gareth Murdock on bass and Peter Alcorn on drums. During the Pirates Of The Sea cover version of “Wolves Of The Sea” they got supported by Týr front man Heri Joensen and towards the end finally the huge rubber duck was starting its journey across the audience.
The weather got better and the sun was sometimes burning from the sky, the mood was all the time at its boiling point and it was simply one huge party. What more could one want? For me it was the absolute highlight of Fortarock 2018. I only hope that the band did not get into troubles because they had so much fun that the played something more than 10 minutes longer than they were allowed to (due to this Opeth had less time available what is not a problem for me). Besides that, I was of the opinion just like many others within the crowd that with “Fucked With An Anchor” the end came way too early. Who just wants to party hard without having purple profound lyrics or music is just at the right address with Alestorm!