Alestorm went into the studio today to record Infinite Seas of Stellar Damnation, their ninth album, and announced it in the only register this band has.
They are at Nahrávací Studio Divadla Na Orlí in Czechia, with Lasse Lammert producing again, which he has done for most of their career. "Like most things in life, it comes out sometime next year," they wrote, "assuming we finish it."
The song titles came with the announcement and they are exactly what you would expect: Alcohol and Gnomes, The Cult of Leviathan, The Pope's Gonna Be A Pirate. There is a Jimmy Buffett cover. The closing track runs past twelve minutes, there are bonus tracks, and parts of it are in Japanese.
Nineteen years in, the joke is still load bearing, and the records keep selling because the band have never once pretended the joke is a disguise for something more serious. The last single made the same point in three minutes.