Review by criscool623 on June 14, 2020.

Despite not having listened to every Alestorm studio release (or at least with close attention), I consider myself as a follower of their music and career. I have in mind albums like Black Sails at Midnight (an inconsistent album with some great and other awful songs) and Sunset of the Golden Age (which is, to my eyes, the best album of the band so far), and I have always liked the combination of folk elements with the typical melodies and songwriting of power metal, which gave that particular pirate-inspired style to the band.

Curse of the Crystal Coconut (a strange and kind of stupid name) is the first album that I listen to from the band since Sunset... I totally ignored No Grave But the Sea mainly because of singles like 'Mexico' and 'Fucked with an Anchor'. The first one was AWFUL and the second one was nothing special, so I was afraid I'd lose my time listening to an inferior release to its previous album. In addition, I could notice that the band started to manage a more immature and less serious approach within their music. Such things made me believe that the band's career would start deteriorating, but after listening to this album, I admit that I was (kind of) wrong.

I enjoyed  this album a lot. The songs are pretty catchy as there are really good melodies that are easily memorable. When I realized, I was whistling or humming the melodies of several songs (in particular the singles of the album [except 'Tortuga'; we'll talk about that song later]). In this sense, the songs feel more oriented to power metal, and as a fan of the genre, I found this aspect great.

Another thing to highlight are the keyboards. The sound of trumpets and flutes adds more epicity to this album and enriches several songs to make them more complete and gripping. 'Zombies Ate my Pirate Ship' and 'Wooden Leg Part Two' are the most remarkable songs in this aspect. The keyboard makes these songs more epic and can delight to more than one listener. Check this while listening to these songs.

This album gambles with numerous types of voice and each one is collocated in the precise moment to make it more effective. Christopher Bowes's voice rough tone sounds very characteristic of a pirate, which is one of the aspects that give more personality to the band. However, I want to stand out the participation of Gareth Murdock at the growls and his guttural voice. He's not a top-notch death metal singer, but the moments when he sings are the most savage ones, and this is a success. The choirs, which are sung by all the band, are perfect to sing along the band, and this will be something great to sing along at the concerts. There's even a little participation of female vocals in 'Zombies Ate my Pirate Ship', which adds more points to this song.

Despite having enjoyed a lot of the album, I have to say that it's not a musical marvel nor a masterpiece. It's enjoyable, catchy and perfect to party, but it's not anything that you will want to buy in a physical format and keep it as a great oeuvre, and here is the reason why I think that.

Most of the songs are very formulaic. Many songs start with a catchy melody that after two chorus repetitions, the melody is just repeated with a different keyboard sound, which feels redundant and devoid of imagination to write a different thing. This is the same formula that uses their "classic" songs like 'Keelhauled' and 'Drink!', and I think the band is abusing of this structure when writing their songs.

There are 4 songs that quit shine to the album as a whole. 'Tortuga' is a strange experiment that despite not being necessarily a bad song (you have to be kind of open-minded to be able to enjoy it), it breaks the rhythm that the album has. I see potential, but the song just remains as an odd curiosity. 'Pirate's Scorn' and 'Shit Boat' are pretty boring and flat. You can skip these songs and it would not affect your experience listening to the album. 'Henry Martin' is an inconsequential song and it would have been better if the album had finished with 'Wooden Leg Paet Two', as this one just demerits mere the album as well as the previous songs, you won't miss anything special if you don't listen to it.

For me, the best song from the album is 'Wooden Leg Part Two'. It has a great variety of sections and elements as blast beats, tremolo picking, 8-bit sounds and the final part (reminiscent to the first part of this "saga") that make it intense the most complete song.

The lyrics are another topic that everyone will have an opinion about. I don't have any problem with a more childish approach as long as the music is good, but if you take into account them to enjoy a good record, this particular aspect may be unpleasant.

To conclude, Alestorm has done better things. This album is like eating chewing gum; you will enjoy it or a while, but after that, you will want to try something better. I still consider Sunset of the Golden Age as their best album. Most of the songs here are just good, but nothing really outstanding. Hope they regain the greatness they once had.

Rating: 7.2 out of 10

Review by Adam M on November 21, 2025.

This is the sequel to the classic that is very catchy and filled with memorable songs like “Dr. Stein”.  This is more streamlined than the predecessor and perhaps has a more accessible sound to it.  The vocals are nicely placed on top o f melodic guitar work to make for an exciting listen.  There is very little to dislike as the album is very effective and one of the better power metal albums to be found. 

The musicianship on this album is quite breathtaking to listen with scorching guitars and really high pitched vocals.  This is one of the more addictive albums of the style.  It was an effective and one of a kind.  There is a very vibrant style here and it is quite wonderful to behold.  The production is pretty good.  There is not much to dislike about the instrumentation.

The fault with the album lies in how more interesting music was already created on the last work.  There is not anything that wasn’t already done particularly well on the previous album and this lead s to the work being somewhat redundant.  This is still an exciting album that is really revolutionary along with its predecessor.

All in all, this is a v ery great album that is one of the premier releases of the genre and very entertaining.  It is quite fantastical and pleasing in its approach.  There plenty to get worth listening and the album is very catchy and one of a kind.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Review by Chad on January 14, 2020.

In my quest to find European power metal that doesn't suck in my younger years in the early to mid-2000's (hey, let's face it, there's a lot of wimpy power metal out there) I would come across band after band that I personally just didn't care for, Dragonforce hadn't quite broken out just yet with "Inhuman Rampage" re-igniting the younger crowd's interest in the genre, but I was still fortunate enough to dig up and listen to snippets of bands such as Rhapsody, Hammerfall, and Blind Guardian... none of which would I have chosen to listen to over Metal Church or Razor, but it was enlightening to get another perspective on what metal could do in other contexts when the focus wasn't so aggressive, sometimes even happy to a fault. Helloween's Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II is the first album that comes to mind when I think of albums that have influenced modern power metal more than any other. It pulls out all of the stops with fairy tale lyrics, uplifting and joyous chord progressions, and all in all isn't very... "metal" by my account, though that's more of a subjective viewpoint. Either way, I did see the magnificence in the album. So much so as a matter of fact that I actually listened to this one before listening to Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I, and I'm pretty sure it's against the law in some countries for metal heads to not follow albums in chronological order when they are split into multiple parts.

How could one blame me, part two is longer, has one extra track on it, has the namesake of the duology at the very end of the album, and has one of the best album covers I've ever seen. In the grand scheme of things, the two albums aren't all that different from each other, though I will say that I was truly missing out by skipping part one and fixating squarely on this album because with each Helloween album one will notice this very slight gradual shift in the band towards an ever increasingly pop oriented sound, and by the time we get to this very album, I think we can sing its praises from sun up to sun down about everything that it does right, Michael Kiske's voice is still among the greatest regardless of genre, the original operatic and theatrical sound, the originality of pioneering an entire subgenre, the memorable guitar solos. It's fantastic, but it certainly lacks any good or creative riffs with much of the material on the album being constructed of mere power chords for the majority of each song. It might not be that noticeable if the only thing you had to compare it to was Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I, but if one were to revisit Walls of Jericho, then listen to these two albums back to back, it becomes way more noticeable that the band does seem to be losing their ingenuity along the way.

In small doses, that's not necessarily a bad thing, I personally found the band's debut to be too technical to want to come back to it as much as I do these two albums. So it all works out for my tastes, but the only real issue I take with Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II is this shall we say more authentic power metal sound the band really starts to pioneer here with slaphappy tunes such as "Dr. Stein", "Rise and Fall", and to a lesser degree "I Want Out", a song which could be covered by a pop punk band and no one would bat an eye over it. Not necessarily skip-worthy material, but certainly makes for a less consistent listen when they're stacked up against the glorious and brave "Eagle Fly Free" or the multi-dimensional title track, a kind of masterpiece of a song that many used to think only a band like Queen could write with their magnum opus "Bohemian Rhapsody". Helloween seemed to have something to prove, to not allow themselves to be outdone by their former work, part two needed a thirteen-minute epic to rival "Halloween" to cover all of their bases. Job well done as far as I'm concerned, but I have to say that I do prefer "Halloween", and the first part of the duology in general. Both are great, but "Halloween" has the benefit of being on an album that is actually more guitar oriented, Kai Hansen, Markus Grosskopf and Michael Weikath were still writing decent riffs would inspire someone to pick up a guitar for themselves, part two really has very few of those outside of "Eagle Fly Free".

It was this very direction that influenced original guitarist/singer Kai Hansen to take his leave from the band to form his own power metal band Gamma Ray shortly after the release of Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II, I like to think of Helloween and Gamma Ray as the Metallica and Megadeth of the power metal sub-genre, a guitarist breaks away to form his own band that would rival the success of the band he was previously in, and wouldn't you know it, the band would suffer from his absence as fans ridiculed and shunned the next few albums to come after his departure including the oddly named Pink Bubbles Go Ape and the complete and total descent into pop music that was Chameleon which Kai foresaw as early as Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I. Part two is closer to that pop oriented material than the average listener would expect. I like the album, but I think everyone out there saying it's a masterpiece are forgetting about the obviously weaker tracks among the greats here. Often times I find that an album only needs two or three good songs and everything else can more or less coast on the coattails of the bigger and better tracks and so long as the rest of the material isn't outright garbage, most people will still call it a masterpiece, Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II is definitely one of those albums. It's a step down from the previous album, but still one that should be highly sought after by fans of the genre.

Highlights:
'Eagle Fly Free'
'Keeper of the Seven Keys'
'You Always Walk Alone'

Rating: 8.8 out of 10