Two things to know about me: I am a heavy metal fan, and I love Christmas!
Normally these two things are kept very separate. After all, Christmas isn’t exactly the most metal of Christian festivals, is it?
(Come to think of it, I think the most metal one might be Easter? With the Crucifixion and zombie Jesus and everything…)
Anyway, when it comes to music, Christmas has got so much to choose from.
First off, there’s the Christian hymns that got turned into songs (O Holy Night, Joy to the World, etc.) Always quite popular songs that are often rather slow and subdued.
Then there are the classic Christmas songs, mostly written in the 1950s and 60’s (White Christmas, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree etc.).
These are the songs that get the most air-time and most people would be happy to hear them around the holidays.
And then there’s the modern Christmas songs (Candy Cane Lane, Shake Up Christmas etc.)
These songs never really do quite as well as the classics, but that doesn’t stop artists from trying!
There must be dozens of these new songs released every year. The Spotify playlist of new Christmas songs for 2023 currently lists 40 new songs at the time of writing.
There may actually be a reason that these songs don’t do as well as the certified classics.
Because they aren’t already classics.
The Christmas songs we hear as we grow up, they then become the songs that we are nostalgic for and remind us of our best Christmases.
Newer songs won’t have that effect unless they get played every year and they start to build that nostalgia and memories in our brains.
This means that these new songs will need to have mass appeal as soon as they are released to then get played more often and gain that nostalgia effect.
If you were to take all the popular songs from each of these categories however, I think there are some defining characterises for most of them:
- Slower
- Softer
- Messages of religion/peace on earth/importance of family
And this is why it’s so weird that so many heavy metal bands try to create their own Christmas songs too!
Attempts at Heavy Metal Christmas Songs
There have been lots of attempts over the years by metal bands to create a great Christmas song.
Sadly, however, these attempts generally fall in to one of the following categories.
1. Good heavy metal song, bad Christmas song.
Mistress for Christmas is a pretty good, classic-sounding AC/DC song.
And yet, I don’t think many families add this to their annual Christmas playlist, because it sounds exactly like an AC/DC song.
“Listen, I like female form in minimum dress
Mistress gor Christmas, AC/DC
Money to spend with a capital S
Get a date with the woman in red
Wanna be in Heaven with three in a bed”
Fa-la-la-la-la lala la la…
The song may be Christmas themed, but it doesn’t exactly have a Christmas message.
2. Good Christmas song, bad heavy metal song
This is a much less common category, and mostly happens when a heavy metal band does a straight cover of a Christmas song.
I may be about to create some enemies with listing this as a bad heavy metal song, but here goes…
Twisted Sister released a cover of ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ in 2006.
Since this is already a Christmas classic, we have the ‘good Christmas song’ section ticked.
However, as a heavy metal song, it just isn’t very good. All the instruments take a back seat, so as to focus on the vocals. So the actual music doesn’t sound very good, meaning the vocals have to do the heavy lifting.
And they don’t.
Dee Sniper sings the song in a rather flat and slow style, to better match the original sound. You can tell he wants to put more energy into it, and I think the sound would sound a hundred times better if he did go over the top with it!
(Although I will admit that the intro short film is quite fun)
There’s many better Twisted Sister songs out there, and around 4 million better Christmas songs.
But then, sadly, we get to the worst of both worlds category:
3. Bad Christmas song, bad heavy metal song
I could talk about ‘Cashing in on Christmas’ by Bad News here. However, they were a joke band who were designed to be bad and poke fun at heavy metal bands that were more substance over style, so they don’t really count.
(Also it’s actually pretty fun, so I wouldn’t even say it’s a bad song!)
What I will instead talk about is Theocracy and their song Wynter Fever.
Theocracy is a Christian metal band, and they are devout!
The band name is the word for a form of government that recognise their deity/God as the supreme ruling authority. So, the exact opposite of separation of Church and State.
Surely thats a good sign for their Christmas songs, right? They’re a metal band who already make Christian music, so their Christmas songs must be the perfect blend of heavy metal and classic Christmas themes and messages?
No.
The heavy metal is done well, which makes sense as they are a power metal band that has been around for a long time.
My issue is the lyrics. Wynter Fever is a 10-minute power ballad about the love between the son of Santa Claus and the daughter of Frosty the Snowman.
The children of these two beloved characters doesn’t scream ‘heavy metal’ to me.
And yet that is exactly what Theocracy tried to do. The band tried to turn this love story into a grim, desperate heavy metal saga….
“I am Festus Claus, the son of Santa,
Wynter Fever, Theocracy
And I got a thing for Frosty’s daughter.
Father says ‘No way!’
Cos from a month from now,
she’ll turn into a puddle of water.”
These lyrics are meant to be fun and tongue in cheek, but they’re played straight and sung as if this is the most heavy metal thing ever. The song come across as confusing and silly, but unintentionally.
Of course this is just my own opinion, and I know that some people do love this band/song, but I don’t get it and I think there’s a reason the song remains rather obscure.
Mixed messages
One big issue with a heavy metal Christmas song is that the general message and style of the songs doesn’t easily fit together.
Christmas songs are often about Christianity (obviously), which is not something many heavy metal bands tend to sing about.
Heavy metal bands and Christianity tend to mix as well as oil and water.
Or wooden Chruches and molotov cocktails.
There’s a reason that Christian metal is its own sub-genre.
I think that this is why so many bands go the opposite way and instead make songs that sound like Christmas songs, but actually with anti-Christmas messaging.
Some good anti-Christmas Christmas songs from other music genres include:
X-M@S by Corey Taylor
This is an angry tirade from a man who hates Christmas. The song is funny in his over-the-top aggression and the puns and jokes in the lyrics.
X-mas has been X’ed by NOFX
This is a song about Christmas being cancelled after finding proof that Jesus never existed. It’s very silly and mostly full of puns, whilst still being a very good pop-punk song.
The Seasons Upon Us by Dropkick Murphys
This song doesn’t mock the religious aspect of the holiday as much, and is instead mocking the idea that Christmas is about family.
The song tells the story of a family who don’t get along but feel like they need to come together at Christmas, making all of them miserable.
The sound of Christmas
If you were to listen to a heavy metal song, you may just say that ‘it doesn’t sound Christmassy’.
This may be because the songs are often played faster than more typical Christmas songs. The average tempo of popular Christmas songs is 115 BPM, while most heavy metal is often played faster.
It’s hard to get concrete data, as even heavy metal songs do vary in tempo as they change styles (Doom and Sludge metal is much slower than average, while mathcore and thrash are obscenely fast).
However, as one example, the popular song Reign in Blood by Slayer is played at 212 BPM. This is clearly much faster than the average Christmas song.
Another note about the style of Christmas songs is that the most popular ones are often played in the major key.
Heavy metal doesn’t sound very good in the major key, because it doesn’t translate well to the typical instrument of metal: electric guitars.
It’s hard to explain through text, so here’s a video of a guitarist playing some popular heavy metal riffs in the major key. They sound much less heavy metal and frankly all sound like Sum41.
So after all this, are there any heavy metal Christmas song that works both as a Christmas song and as a heavy metal song?
I think I’ve found the closest that I can get, though you could argue that it doesn’t count:
Run, Run, Rudolph – Lemmy, Dave Grohl, Billy Gibbons
This is a heavy metal cover of the Chuck Berry song, the original song I would argue has become a Christmas classic since its release in 1958. This cover has Dave grohl on drums, Billy Gibbons on Guitar and Lemmy on vocals.
I think the reason this heavy metal cover works (and the reason you may argue that this doesn’t count) is that the song was already a rock and roll song, so is already on its way to metal.
The original song is already an outlier in that it was rock and roll, which is not very common with Christmas classics.
Essentially, all these three musicians did was take the original, and turn up all the heavy metal elements (a very Lemmy thing to to, to be fair).
Dave Grohl on the drums plays heavier and faster than the original, which are barely present, as the guitar and vocals are the star.
Oddly, Foo Fighters would also release a cover of the song in 2020. This version is much more like the original, basically just played at twice speed.
In this heavy metal version however, the guitar riff more forceful than Chuck berry’s original, while still being recognisably the same tune.
And having Lemmy do the vocals is pretty much the most metal thing you could do to the song without it becoming distorted and strange.
The great thing about this version is that it stays recognisable as the Chucky Berry version, so as to not alienate people who love the original. At the same time though, it adds a much heavier, grittier feel that absolutely shifts the song from rock and roll to heavy metal.
I don’t think that anyone who loves the original would hear this song and be disappointed.
Wrap up
Christmas songs are hard to get right in any style. There’s dozens of new ones released every year, and the chances of any of them becoming certified Christmas classics is as low as actually finding the north pole filled with elves and flying reindeer.
Heavy metal music and Christmas music doesn’t really crossover very much, so it’s difficult to get a heavy metal song that fits well and satisfies both sides.
But the more often that we hear a song, the more we tend to like it, so who knows, maybe in 20 years, maybe Mistress for Christmas will be considered a veritable Christmas classic!
But I doubt it.
