Over the next three weeks and a bit I’ll be presenting some of the best, worst and most interesting Christmas-themed songs, or any covers I can find of Christmas songs by metal bands. There are a lot more of them out there than you might think --- even metallers get festive at this time of year --- and I’ll be doing my darndest to hunt them down for you.
As per usual, I’ll be writing a little about the song as well as looking at the artiste and assessing whether or not they would have been likely to have recorded a Christmas song. After all, nobody would be surprised to learn that Queen or Bon Jovi had penned a festive tune, but did you know that perennial yuletide favourite, King Diamond, released one of his own? It’s true. And more shocks and surprises await you along the way. Maybe.
So let’s get started: there are only twenty-three shopping days left to the big event!
We three kings --- Kamelot --- from the live album “The Expedition”, 2000
Although included on the live album released by progressive metal giants Kamelot at the turn of the millennium, this version of the old Christmas Carol is actually taken from extra material recorded during the sessions for their 1998 album, “Siege perilous”. It’s all instrumental, mostly on guitar, and includes sections from “God rest ye merry gentlemen” too, making it something of a Christmas medley from Kamelot. Seriously, if you want a Christmas-flavoured metal song, or a metal-flavoured Christmas song, you can’t go much wrong with this!
Although the US metallers would not immediately be seen as having any sort of links to Christianity, they do explore similar themes in the double-concept albums “Epica” and “The black halo”, and have certainly alluded to religious themes on some of their other works. Plus it probably just seemed cool to do it, though given that the concerts “The Expedition” is recorded from were in August, it must have sounded a little weird to be playing it live at that point. Great song though.