No Quarter - Alestorm

Hey there, hi there, ho there… or should I say Yo-Ho, yo-ho, y'arr scurvy Dogs?!

I'm Sir Donnerbold, or Sir Quackly for all you out where who didn't grew up with the German translation of Carl Barks' Donald Duck stories. I'm a big Disney fan and also a passionate blogger. What am I doing here? Well, Kurtis was kind enough to walk the plank today and so I'm the Captain of Covering the Mouse. Well, for one day.

I want to present you a cover of one famous score tune, which almost didn't exist: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer had the daunting task of bringing a certain Disney ride into the movie theatres. And one of the many, many challenges of this difficult project was the score. At first, Alan Silvestri was chosen as composer, but his music lacked the "Oomph!" Bruckheimer was looking for. His frequent collaborator Hans Zimmer had interest in helping out, but he was contractually forced to stay on his Warner Bros. film The Last Samurai. No side project was allowed. So, he recommended his protégé Klaus Badelt. But because of his friendship to Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski, Zimmer decided to compose one demo, hidden from the eyes of Warner Bros. The demo (called Pirates Day One 4.56 AM) compromised several melodies, on which Badelt based some of his tunes for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. One of these rearranged melodies became one of the most popular film tunes of the last few decades: He's a Pirate.

The catchy and epic score of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl certainly inspired the band ALESTORM. Many metal bands incorporate a Viking theme into their music, but they decided to go with an pirate theme and some of their bigger songs share similarities with epic swashbuckling movie scores. The members of Alestorm call their mix of heavy metal, folk metal and power metal - comically "True Scottish Pirate Metal", a new subgenre which gathers many fans.

Alestorm's debut album Captain Morgan's Revenge consisted of new material, one cover of a Scottish traditional and covers of their own songs from Alestorm's humble beginnings in 2004 as an independent band called Battleheart. The album was very well received in the metal community and only one year later the sophomore album BLACK SAILS AT MIDNIGHT came out. This album brought finally the new recorded version of the last remaining Battleheart song without an official release: No Quarter, an instrumental piece which last part is nothing less than an awesome metal rendition of He's a Pirate!

I think it captures the energy of the original and combines it with the power of metal, and so it's one of my favorite Disney covers. I mean, Pirates of the Caribbean AND metal, what's not to like?