Band:	Swashbuckle
Album:	We Hate The Sea
Style:	Thrash metal
Release date:	August 2014

01. We Hate The Sea (And Everything In It)
02. Beer Goggles
03. Poop Deck Toilet Wreck
04. Slaughter On International Waters

I feel kind of stupid writing a full review for not-quite-seven minutes of music, but with Swashbuckle, stupid is okay.

Swashbuckle's first release since 2010's Crime Always Pays? offers four blistering whirlwinds of nautical nastiness. The American trio has only grown saltier in the intervening years, bringing to bear even heavier guns than usual. "We Hate The Sea (And Everything In It)," for example, sounds remarkably grindcore-influenced.

Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of sacrificing the thoughtful, folksy elements that make Swashbuckle more than your average band of raging hellhounds. Also tossed overboard are the acoustic interludes that so elegantly break up the onslaught on the albums, one of the most rewarding things about listening to these purveyors of piratical puerility.

The real culprit behind the shortcomings of We Hate The Sea is its incredibly short running time. It leaves no opportunity for some of Swashbuckle's strongest characteristics to take wing and strips down what it brings to the table. A diminutive EP of violent thrash such as this might be fun to listen to a few times, but at the end of the day, Swashbuckle really thrive on solid albums, not individual songs. There isn't enough album here for the band to develop anything meaningful.

At their best, Swashbuckle serve up sweat-soaked growls and hard-bitten riffs so scurvy they could jaundice the entire Spanish armada, balanced out by traditional-sounding excursions into folk territory. We Hate The Sea, while hardly scorn-worthy, dishes out little more than a brief, bite-sized packet of average thrashing.