Get In The (2020) Holiday Spirit With These Metal Dubs Of Christmas Songs
Despite shuttered shops, quarantined loved ones, and downsized Christmas dinners, there is still one hallowed holiday tradition left standing: Hearing Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" blaring from every godforsaken speaker in the land. But 2020 is not the year for cheer (yes, I would love to have people over for Christmas, Mariah), so why not get into a more appropriately apocalyptic Yuletide spirit with a little less Santa and a little more Satan?
To put it mildly, 2020 has been metal as fuck. So why should our end of year celebrations be any different? Luckily, music mashup artists like Andy Rehfeldt and Bill McClintock have injected Christmas classics with the melodic screams of the damned. And really, nothing says "it's been a hell of a year" better than having Marylin Manson howl "You can't see the forest for the trees // You can't smell your own shit on your knees" over the jingle jangle of the number one Christmas song of all time.
Over on YouTube, you can find plenty of satanic panic fused to Mariah Carrey. But if you're feeling a bit nostalgic for your mom's enduring obsession with Wham!, why not replace George Michael's broken heart on "Last Christmas" with the horrors of the Holocaust in Slayer's "Angel of Death"?
Or, if you still plan on standing six feet in front of people's doorsteps to do some classic caroling, you can apply that same dark desperation to the tune of "The Sleigh Ride."
You could even flip the script, drop down a boombox, and teach neighbors the gospel of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" while donning your gay apparel and sing the ancient Yuletide carol:
Chretal (as no one calls the unholy union of Christmas songs and metal) can't just change X-mas classics; it can very much improve on them. We all know that Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is secretly a song about enacting a dark winter solstice ritual while pretending to celebrate Christmas, so it's much better when the music reflects that desperate struggle between dark forces and cheery children's choirs:
But the most important Christmas message that Chretal imparts, aside from the fact that jingle bells go surprisingly well with ax-shredding, is that no matter our differences, there are always things that can bind us together -- even between artists as disparate as the musical equivalent of pure evil and whatever metal band is singing over Mariah Carey.
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