THE PRIVATEER is a German band who brought their debut album "Facing The Tempest" through Trollzorn Records. An album with guest appearances that's placed inside the Pirate Metal genre, but that's not all I hear despite their name and their album theme.

Nowadays there are a lot of bands, but not all do get the chance to launch an album. The fact that they did get that far, mostly (certainly not always) tells that there's a certain quality to find. Well THE PRIVATEER is talented and their album "Facing The Tempest" shows that they have guts, simply by doing what they do, but it hears off that this band's still quite new and is still a bit searching for their way through all the genres to create their own sound. This is a nice search to listen to like its part of the adventure and the treasure hunting that the album's talking about. And even though "Facing The Tempest" does not contain the Pirate sound I did expect, there's more then one road to get there and for their journey they did set sail to deeper water.

"Facing The Tempest" is called Pirate Metal, but the violin gives it a Folk Metal sound, the Screams and growls are giving it a Death sound, drums and clear vocals are giving it a Power Metal sound and the guitar work gives it a Heavy Metal sound. But...Even though those are powerful elements, the album still sounds a bit weak. Like they've found the wind to set off, without knowing how to use that same wind to actual sail away. Their musical talent and skills are strong enough to keep them floating, but they are still very vulnerable, in special with the other pirates out there who've been around longer.

This debut album shows a lot of potential and is at some points already pretty good. At other points however they're on the edge of being out of tune due to not enough connection with each other yet. The way they've combining raw, screams and clear vocals together with guitar, violin, drums and bass does show that they know who they are, but feels sometimes a bit out of harmony, like they're not sure which way to go together. Still... "Facing The Tempest" also contains a map with possible routes THE PRIVATEER can take from where they're at now and some of those routes do look quite promising.