Europe, Ahoy!

"Everyone gets to choose their own moniker when joining the band,” says Williams as he begins to explain their characters. “We've got The Immobiliser, who is Phil [bass], for his massive, immobilising size, we've got Nath [guitar] who is The Majestic Beast, because I guess he is just some kind of majestic beast, Neil Rummy Rackers [guitar], I don't know, you'll have to ask him about that, Mother Junkst [keyboards], because he's a cheapskate, and Ol' Mate Dazzel [drums], because he's the oldest in the band, albeit only by a few months. I got Ultra Lord because Ultra Lord just sounds cool.”

Formed in 2010, Ultra Lord joined about a year into the game and it seems that's when work got serious on their debut album. Last year's Drink Till We Die is a fun-loving, beer-swilling metal party full of fantastical adventures and drunken singalongs. The Lord explains that despite what one may think of their theme, the band really has no limitations, and is already excitedly working on their second record.

“The topic is pirates – how do you contain it in just one album?” he laughs. “That's the thing, there's so much that you can run with. We don't even limit ourselves to what traditional, seafaring pirates do. We take to the skies, we harpoon the sun, we drink till we die. We can do whatever we want. For example, on the next album, we've got a song about fighting against the First Fleet, and we've got a song about taking on members of themed restaurants – so staff at an outback steakhouse versus the Lagerstein members.”

If that wasn't awesome, or ridiculous, or just ridiculously awesome enough for you, the band even have accompanying beer bongs that join them onstage. When asked about the session members listed on their Facebook, one learns that they are not contributing musicians, but in fact inanimate objects.

“Those six names – Bongadille, Frosty, Vulcan, Giles, Ultrabong, Scrambells – those are all beer bongs. We've all got beer bongs each with a face on them, and they've all get their own characters, which are analogous to the personalities of the members of the band.”

The first ever 'Lagerfest' is taking place this weekend, which Williams describes as, “a festival that's a little bit less about competing or throwing together line-ups that we reckon will pull numbers, and making it more about just having a gigantic party with our friends, drinking, and dressing like pirates”. Soon after the band will head to Europe for their first ever shows outside of Queensland. The band will tour through March in support of Scotland's similarly-themed Alestorm, and medieval Canadians Ex Deo.

“The guys from Alestorm, we've been talking to for a while,” Williams enthuses. “When they were a bit smaller they were actually into an old band of mine called Tower Of Fire, and they actually asked us in 2010 to play their Australian tour with them, but they did it over MySpace, so nobody ever got the message... much later on, when they actually met the guys from Lagerstein on that exact same tour, and had a bit of a party with them when Lagerstein was very young as a band, they got along fine. Eventually when Chris from Alestorm and Phil were talking over Facebook, Phil revealed that their new singer, which is me, is the old singer of Tower Of Fire, and ever since then it's been like, 'We absolutely have to catch up'. We sent them the album, they really liked it, and they said, 'We have to take you guys with us around Europe'. And that's what this tour is.”