Strap on your eyepatch, crack open the rum and sharpen that sword for a swashbuckling adventure with pirate metal newcomers The Anchors, who describe their lively thrash metal meets ska punk sound as “catchy, fast and crab.”
The Anchors adventure began back in 2021 when Captain John Weak was studying music at university in London. The Captain liked to experiment and already had a metal band back in Italy with drummer Tordig Shovel. So the duo decided to create a project without assigning a specific label to the music. A couple of years later, they got in touch with Chris Bowes, from the big Scottish pirate band Alestorm, who liked their project and wrote a song for them. That track got a great reception, the band began to attract listeners and started putting together a live band, completing the lineup with Flint Eastwood (lead guitar), Wavy Jones (bass) and Pawder (accordion).
On the sound they’ve crafted since, the Captain told us: “We are a crew of angry pirates, but we have got manners. We like chaos, but only when it’s controlled. We are the middle ground between raw and polished. Our two favourite genres are thrash metal (angry and raw) and ska punk (happy and upbeat), and you can expect a blend of the two, with accordions, violins and big choirs.”
Our latest taste of this is the band’s debut EP The Quest For The Golden Shoe, which was released last month, from which they sent us the opening track The Silver Coin. It opens up with a delicious accordion intro, with a lively guitar blitz imitating before dropping into engaging vocals “Over the seas where the pirates rule, There’s a tale that’s to be told, With a manic man, can’t stand any land, Wants to conquer the whole world.” That builds into a big singalong chorus “I will spend my years sailing through the seas, Searching for doubloons, Not of bronze nor gold, But a coin of silver is all I seek, I’m a greedy bitch, I don’t give a shit.”
The fun guitars return and drop into another jaunty verse, which flows into a couple of rounds of the big chorus. A ripping guitar solo takes over with lively drum support, before dual guitars tee up a big final blast of the chorus.
On the track, the Captain told us: “We released the track together with another new track, all in a four-song EP, including our first two songs. We also shot a music video for it, and people really loved it! We’ve been invited to a few festivals thanks to that, and the reception of people was incredible! We had a few fans flying to London from all over the world to see us, and the feeling is that they are really liking our work so far! For the ones who didn’t hear the song yet, expect a pirate ballad with a nice twist.”
As mentioned, the EP includes the band’s entertaining debut single, The Quest For The Golden Shoe, which you can check out in the video below, as well as the excellent sea shanty metal fusion Señor Pirata and the catchy closing track Caribbean Twist.
These tracks are building up to The Anchors’ debut album, on which the Captain said: “We are incredibly excited about it, it’s the effort of four years of focused writing, so we are really relieved that it’s finally all done. Every note is where it’s supposed to be, and the only thing we need is to hit the studio now!
“It’s going to be very interesting because people only heard the ‘single’ songs of the album, the ones that were worth releasing as singles because of the way they work harmonically. The new songs include a whole new variety of styles and things we’ve been working on for a while now, and I am sure the reception will be super positive!”
The Anchors sound is heavily influenced by the likes of Metallica, Ska-P and Rhapsody of Fire. The Captain grew up on bands like Rush and The Offspring, while Tordig is crazy for power metal and Sonata Arctica.
And on what inspires them to write music, the Captain explains: “Our influence is our cat. Well, Tordig’s cat. We started writing a fantasy story around his character, and eventually that shaped into the universe where all our songs are placed. Yes, all our songs are linked together, and they all tell a different part of a story. A story inspired by the cat.
“We could argue that our thematics are not even pirate but fantasy, lots of magical creatures, curses and giant monsters. We are a pirate crew in a fantasy universe, and we are telling our adventures through our music.”
We’re loving the sound of The Anchors’ metal sea shanties, and this is very much the kind of music piracy that we can get behind. The Anchors’ debut album will feature six new tracks, in addition to the songs on the EP, and they’ll be launching a Kickstarter to fund the best possible product that their fans deserve.
And the Captain added: “We encourage whoever wants to be part of the crew to join us. The project is going to be announced on our socials very soon. We are starting out our journey properly now and we want to conquer all the seven seas! Whoever likes fast music, adventures and… cats… you know where to find all of this!”
You can follow The Anchors on Facebook, Instagram, Patreon and TikTok, and check out their music on Spotify, Bandcamp, Apple Music, Soundcloud and YouTube.
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