Genre: Pirate Rock
Rating: R
Target Audience: Grease monkeys, pool hall junkies, and garage rockers that wish they were pirates.

Rather than settle with “Watered-down Rock Scurvy” or “Cut with Baking Soda Rock Scurvy”, the pirate-core band Brine&Bastards has selected nothing short of “Pure Rock Scurvy” for their second album (following Set Sail for Sodomy.) Something of a mini-album featuring only six songs, it nonetheless holds its own as a worthy addition to today’s growing genre of pirate rock.

As with its predecessor, the album begins with an instrumental piece that’s definitive Brine&Bastards. Never Chase A Dog into a Dead-end Alley features tried and true sea shanty tunes re-envisioned through electric guitars and yelling crowds. It’s quick paced, invigorating, and an excellent lead-in to the album’s second song, Drunken Sailor. Again a traditional piece, nothing is changed in the lyrics from what you’d commonly find in traditional versions, but the modern, punk-style vocals and music make this song entirely atypical. While many pirate bands choose to alter the lyrics (most notably by changing the song to “Drunken Pirate”) in order to make it more piratey, Brine&Bastards instead let their musical stylings convey the piracy on its own – and it pays off in every sense.

Shallow Grave is the album’s first original track, being a rollicking tune with a catchy beat and valuable lesson about not sharing secrets with pirates (a dangerous thing to do, as most pirates prefer to silence any potential loose lips.) The Fog follows, and takes a heavier approach to its music as it tells a tale of pirate ghosts.

Shallow Grave and The Fog are both decent songs, but Brine&Bastards are a band that’s at its best when it’s at its worst – meaning depraved. Taste of the East is easily the star of the album, and does not refer to Chinese takeout (well, not in the culinary sense.) Brilliant, quirky, memorable and fun, this is a song about the gift that keeps on giving. It’s a delightfully upbeat song about prostitutes and the STDs they often share with wayward sailors.

The album concludes with F.T.W. (F*ck This World), which might lack the usual pirate references, but certainly carries plenty of pirattitude or, at the very least, profanity. I suppose it could be considered a dedication to a skanky ex, with an oft-repeated message that’s as simple as it is powerful (in short, f*ck this world.)

Pure Rock Scurvy is a fine, fun album for anyone who enjoys some swagger in their rock. It leans a bit more on the rock side than many pirate-core bands, with the instrumentals almost entirely based modern influences than channeling traditional sea shanties. But the lyrics are piratey through and through, and should be well appreciated by those who enjoy the rockier side of pirate-core.

It’s rare to come across an album that is true, undiluted PirateCore from beginning to end, but Set Sail For Sodomy is one such gem. The debut album of Brine&Bastards, it features that perfect mix of rock and punk with sea songs and tales of debauchery.

The album begins strong with Divide the Plunder, a quirky piece in which a squeezebox captures the roll of the sea as an increasing amount of background noises (oceans, birds, barnyard animals) chime in. Loud foot stompings then transition us sharply into A Pirate’s Life For Me – a song that shares names with the famous Disney song, but shares little else. Rather, this is an original piece featuring guitars and aggressive lyrics of seagoing villainy – Pirate rock at its blatant finest.

Subsequent songs follow in this same vein. The Pilot, Battle Stations, Last Call, Song of the Siren, and Beneath the Waves are all highly enjoyable, highly energized original pirate rock songs. Brine&Bastards polish their music enough to be easy on the ears, but leave it rough enough to remain starkly piratey. Spanish Prison is an equally fun track, but it bears special mention due to it’s brilliant usage of kazoos, and humorous lyrics (“Shackled my legs and they shackled my arms. Then they took my ass and they through it overboard.”) – certainly an anthem for anyone that’s ever been laid off.

Whiskey Johnny and The Leaving of Liverpool also merit special consideration, as they’re both traditional songs – albeit performed in a non-traditional way. Brine&Bastards lend their rough rock/punk pirate style to these familiar songs, thus reinventing them into something altogether new.

The album concludes with Beer and Loathing and Prayer (For a Homesick Sailor) – again, both original songs. But this time they carry some additional emotional undertones that stand apart from the rest of the album. They’re still very much from the rock/punk world, but they have a softness beneath the lyrics that’s well suited for concluding an album such as this.

Despite it’s title, Set Sail for Sodomy features relatively tame lyrics. The only “dirty” elements I noticed occured during a spoken word piece in the middle of Overboard in which the band introduces itself. This spoken piece is fun the first time, but I found it distracted from the remainder of the song during subsequent listens. However, this brief moment is really the only shortcoming I found on this album, which is otherwise a shining credit to the growing world of PirateCore.