swashbuckle admiral nobeard

Interview by: Steven Hargreaves / Mary Evans

Date: November 2009

Venue: Email

Photos by: Swashbuckle

Hi guys, how’re you all doing?

Ahoy, we L.I.V.I.N.'.

What’s been happening in the Swashbuckle camp of late?

Touring, writing new songs, pilfering, plundering, and sexing many a wench. The pirates life, so to speak.

We’ve just been reading that you’ll have to postpone your UK leg of the tour… what happened there?

Due to unfortunate circumstances, those of which I'm not sure of at the moment, the shows were canceled at the last minute. So hopefully in the near future we'll be able to thrash the UK in our piratical manner.

Ok, let’s talk about Swashbuckle, the band for a bit…

Do we have to?

Firstly, there are a lot of different genres of metal out there, but why pirates? What made you choose that direction?

Pirate Metal isn't a genre. We play thrash metal. We just enjoy singing about high-seas hi-jinx and utter stupidity of the piratical lifestyle. That and tri-corner hats are so f***ing awesome.

Our reviewer thought your new album Back to the Noose sounds great, and has really kick-ass production – He wanted us to ask how you guys got involved with That Guns n Roses bloke Ron Thal?

We've been friends with Ron for quite some time. He was the reason we were picked up by indie label Bald Freak Music. Basically he saw us at a local show and thought we were beyond retarded and had to get us to put out a full length. He's a really awesome dude, killer guitarist, and all around phenomenal friend. He's guested on our records, we've played in his band, it's basically friends being excellent to each other.

How’s the reaction been to the new release?

Mixed, there's people who love it and get into the theme and thrash hard with us, and then there's those who won't give it the time of day due to the theme. There's always going to be people who either love it or hate it. Either way, we're down for fun and writing fast thrashin' tunes, it's not going to sway our decisions of ways of writing and performing.

What are your musical influences?

Exodus, Testament, Megadeth, Death, Morbid Angel, Blind Guardian, Rage, Tankard, Crowbar, Yanni, the list goes on and on.

How cool was it to be in a computer game – how did you guys come to be involved with Buccaneer:

The Pursuit of Infamy?

It's pretty cool, considering we really didn't have to do much for it. The company who made the game approached us about using some of our tunes in the game, we obliged. They then turned us into the bar band in the game, which was pretty awesome as well.

Metal is a genre that lends itself to humour – yet so many bands fail to spot how funny they are and take themselves too seriously – Does humour belong in music? (To quote the mortal Frank Zappa…)

Humour belongs in everything. Sure there's times to be serious and put on your sad panda bear look and hate everything about everything, but f*** that. Music is supposed to be fun and enjoyable as well as taken seriously. Metal is a larger than life genre of music with songs of demons, drinking, forest dwelling dudes, Satan, nuclear holocaust, it runs the f***ng gamut of over the top shit. If you can't find some humour in that, then you're a f***ing dunce.

You’re heading out on a tour with Korpiklaani, Týr and White Wizzard in America soon… how did this tour come about?

We've done two tours with Korpiklaani and became pretty good friends with the dudes. We always have fun times with them, so they asked us to open for their US tour. We couldn't be more stoked to party with those guys and Tyr. White Wizzard is going to be a f***ing killer time as well, any band that sounds like Diamond Head / Priest and sings about GTO's is A.Ok. in my book.

You were recently out on the Paganfest tour… how did this go?

It was the most fun I've had ever. Every night it was a party, fun times, high spirits and f***ing Unleashed! I watched them every night, and it got better and better. But there was definitely some great times and fond memories that we all had. It was killer, I'd tour with all those bands again in a heartbeat.

We heard there was a bus fire!?

Aye, we were driving down the autobahn in Austria on the way to Milan, Italy and the bus engine caught fire. Since we partied pretty hard that night, we were all still drunk as f***. 3/4 of the bus was asleep in their bunks, so luckily the Commodore, myself, Anders from Unleashed, and a couple of guys from Die Apo Reiter were up to get everyone off the bus. It was pretty retarded.

Was anyone hurt?

No one was hurt, but luckily we had enough sense to run in the bus and save all the booze. We almost lost the booze that night, it would've been a sad day.

Ok, if you had to describe yourselves to someone who’d never heard Swashbuckle before, what would you say?

"It's like sex with your eardrums." That's what I would say. Either that or "It's thrash metal that's all about pirates."

You’re on a desert island (unfortunately your ship has run aground out in the sea and you’ve had to swim ashore)… what do you drag with you from your pirate ship?

Guitars, rum, gold, and some wenches.

Can you describe the rest of the band members in a few words for us?

Commodore RedRum: Awesome dude, loves Zelda, shreds guitars.

Captain Crashride: Has shitty tattoos, drinks jagerbombs, hits things with sticks.

Bodacious beard, larger than life, yells into a microphone.

Best Swashbuckle gig so far?

Wacken. It was so much f***ing fun. Just having a bunch of people whirlpitting and doing waves of death and having a ball, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Best gig you’ve been to by another band?

Engorged / Ghoul at the Goregon Massacre Fest in 2007. Everyone was having a killer time moshing and enjoying fun.

Any embarrassing moments on stage?

At the beginning of our set once, I ripped a huge hole in my shorts and had to play the set with a wicked crowd breeze on my balls. T'was quite excellent.

What’s the best thing about being in the band?

Being able to have fun, write metal that I'd want to listen to and touring the world. It rules.

Have you got a message for your UK fans?

Sorry for the shenannigans, but we will be back to thrash your f***ing faces off and drink with all of you afterwards.

Well, thank you for taking the time to do this interview for us and we can’t wait to see you out here

on tour!