Hi there, it’s the Raucous Rocker, and it’s Christmas time! Hopefully everyone else is having as good of a holiday as I am, and I would like to take this time to wish everyone Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays! Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s get down to business: heavy metal!
How do metal and Christmas come together? If you’ve ever searched for an answer to this question, you’ve likely come across Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a band that got famous mostly by just playing Christmas metal songs. But we’re not going to talk about them today, we’re going to dive in a little deeper as we usually do, and review for the first time a CD, not a band. This is my special Christmas review of A Brutal Christmas: The Season in Chaos!
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I wasn’t really sure about this when I first discovered it--was it just random metal bands doing covers of Christmas carols? Well, it turns out yes, that’s what it is, but fortunately, they’re all underground metal bands which are the ones I most like to review. Although it doesn’t really matter much in the long run, all of the groups are Christian metal bands, and the songs are all religious songs like "Angels We Have Heard On High’" rather than Christmas songs like "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (boy, that would be something to hear a metal version of!). I would make some kind of comment to those weird Satan worshipping metalheads not to come on and troll the bands, but let’s face it, that would require them actually going onto the Internet and reading something that isn’t lyrics to a cheesy Immortal song. I think it would be more likely for Metallica to release a good album than for that to happen. Anyway, let’s begin--I’ll be going in order of the tracks, and at the end of my comments on each song I will give it a rating from 1 to 10 and at the end I will rate the entire album 1 to 10. Got it? Okay, here we go.
1. "Angels We Have Heard on High" by Archer. Archer seems like a heavy/power metal band, and this song clearly displays it. It begins with some catchy guitar riffs playing the chorus of the song before speeding up and allowing the vocalist to enter the fray. Near the end of the song, a frantic guitar solo breaks out, something I’ve always wanted to hear in a Christmas song. Wouldn’t that be cool if you were just walking through the mall and all of a sudden during the middle of "Jingle Bells" a guitar entered and broke out into a lightning fast guitar solo? Anyway, the worst part of this song is the vocals; the instrumentation is excellent but the vocalist seems to be having trouble keeping up with the instruments. Although he’s trying to hit certain notes, his vocal range just doesn’t allow it. Ah well, it’s still a good song and a nice opener for this album. 7.5/10
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