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As I've said before about Christopher Bowes' crew in Alestorm, the "Pirate Metal" shtick would seem to be a limited one, at best. How many songs about drinking, sailing and wenching can there be? A shitload would seem to be the answer. Even though the band infamously sang about this very topic on the last album ("Scraping the Barrel") they've come back with a decidedly inventive yet still Alestorm fourth album, Sunset on the Golden Age. There are songs about the aforementioned topics including silly stuff like "Wooden Leg!" where the protagonist hilariously loses ALL his limbs ("Japanese bastards!) and the band's overall style remains crunchy Power Metal with plenty of synths providing just the right amount of accordion to give the songs that "sea shanty" vibe. What keeps Sunset on the Golden Age from being just a rehash of the band's previous albums is the daring inclusion of epic compositions (the eleven-minute "Sunset on the Golden Age" with its Traditional Metal solo), electronic/video game music (the opening of "1741 (The Battle of Cartagenas)"), horns ("Walk the Plank") and even pop vocal lines ("Hangover"). And most of the stuff is worked into the Power Metal superstructure seamlessly. OK, the pop stuff on "Hangover" doesn't really work all that well, but the rest most definitely does. Alestorm aren't recreating the wheel but they manage to dress it up on Sunset on the Golden Age in a way that is fresh and fun. If you don't like Pirate Metal, or Power Metal in general, this stuff will obviously not appeal to you. If you do like a bit of rum now and then and were worried that Alestorm would run out of ideas, fear not, Sunset on the Golden Age, unlike those rotten Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, is entertaining as hell.