And I’ll switch gears again, from the Birthday Massacre to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. This song is called Christmas Eve/Sarajevo – 12/24, and has bits of  traditional Christmas songs in it, largely Carol of the Bells and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

And for the curious, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is essentially the metal band Savatage, accompanied by a large orchestra. ^_^

And in this case, the video is an AMV with various clips from Nightmare Before Christmas, which I thought was fairly appropriate. Though the original music video isn’t bad, either.

We switch gears again on the runaway roller coaster that is your very BRUTAL Christmas – from Iron Maiden to emo/goth/people with too much black makeup.

This is The Birthday Massacre’s Red Stars, with lyrics that describe the modern Christmas Experience™ better than anything I’ve ever heard – lyrics like “You give it/We take it/You build it/We break it/You sign it and we erase it/You feel it/We fake it” and “Wasted education/Celebrating imitation/Misplaced admiration/Speaking for a generation”.

Oh, and if you think you’ve heard The Birthday Massacre here before, well… maybe you have.

Courtesy of StrangeLittleMonster.

Let’s shift gears from black metal to some good old Iron Maiden today. Today’s song for this very BRUTAL Christmas is The Number of the Beast, which is another excellent choice for this joyous holiday season.

And if you think you’ve heard The Number of the Beast  here before, you have, but by the all-female tribute band The Iron Maidens.

From Iron Maiden’s The Early Days tour at Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2005.

Courtesy of notp.

Funny you’d do Call of Ktulu, Shanoah, cos I’m shifting gears from pagan rock to black metal.

This is Dimmu Borgir with The Serpentine Offering. Now, I’m sure there are better songs. I’m sure there are better Dimmu Borgir songs. But I like the whole Christians-as-bad-guys and guys-in-black-spiky-armor-as-good-guys vibe of this video, not to mention the Birth Of What Looks To Be The Antichrist scene. It all fits so well with the holidays, don’t you think?

Courtesy of Nuclear Blast Europe.

No, there aren’t any transsexual dragons in my novel… but that is a good idea. I’ll have to put it in.

Anyway, you’re right. Christmas is a facade, a veneer of Christianity over mega-pagan-coolness. That lovely traditional Christmas tree in your living room? It’s a giant dick, ya moron!

On that note, here’s some lovely pagan metal – or as my friend Mike likes to call it, beard rock – from Mastodon. You may have heard Circle of Cysquatch here before. But this one is better quality, and anyway I just love that opening guitar lick.

Courtesy of iDrewsMusic.

Well, if you’re back, Sean, I suppose I should post more then once every 10 days or so. So your NANO novel involved transexual dragons? Interesting. I’ll have to read it one of these days.

I’m agreed about Christmas. Everyone acts like perfect, Norman Rockwell people for a few days, then goes back to screaming at each other for the rest of the year. And of course, Christmas and birthdays are the only time people are supposed to give gifts to each other, or even be nice to each other[1].

There isn’t any real honesty in it. It’s all a facade. Which is why I thought this song from the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde musical would be appropriate.

[1] “And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.” – Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Ah, Christmas. A time of Peace on Earth, Joy to the World and Massive Consumer Debt to Pretty Much Everybody. A time when we gather our family and desperately try to act like Shiny Happy TV People.

Not me. My mood is a tad different in December, to the point where, in the immortal words of Spider Jerusalem, I feel like taking a shit in a baptismal font.

I don’t know where this mood comes from. Maybe it’s the shortening days and my depression. Maybe it’s my pagan side responding to the impending death and rebirth of Sol Invictus.

Or, most probably, it comes from being force-fed Perfect Christmas Treacle for over a month.

All I know is that, for some reason, I suddenly develop a powerful hunger for double bass pedals and power chords after Thanksgiving.

This is why I’m kicking off A Very BRUTAL Christmas here at One Neat Thing a Day: one metal video a day until I get sick of it. It’s a Cherished Christmas Tradition here, like Christmas trees and writing hysterical letters to the editor about how the cashier at the grocery store wished me Happy Holidays instead of a Merry Christmas.

Our first offering is Burn The Earth, one of my favorite songs from Dethklok and available on Dethalbum II. I like Metalocalypse. The absurdity, the stupidity, the violence and the general pagan vibe of the cartoon meshes rather well with my mood around the holiday season.

You may say that Dethklok isn’t metal, but just a parody of metal from, at best, a virtual band. But then, you’d be forgetting four very important things:

1. I like Dethklok.
2. I have a blog.
3. You don’t.
4. Nyah nyah nyah.

Courtesy of JamesHeadbangerfield.

Haven’t posted in a while, and I thought I’d share some clips from the Muppet Show. The first two both feature three puppets made to look like the puppeteers, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Jerry Nelson.

The first one is called Going to Morrow, and is an American folk song. I love the verbal confusion running amok in it. The way the muppets bounce up and down to the beat of the song is great, too.

Then there is You Don’t Want My Love. I just have to laugh at this one. It’s al together silly. And I love it.

I couldn’t find more of Jim, Jerry, and Frank together, unfortunately.I did find Floyd from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem playing a pretty good cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, though.

Haven’t posted in a while. I’ll try to keep posting here every so often, but I doubt there’ll be any regularity to it any more. I’d rather keep posting erratically then stop posting all together, though.

So, theme today is stuff I’ve listened to recently. It usually is, actually. I’m just being a little more blatant about it right now.

First, I’ve played Who Knows Where the Time Goes being sung by Kate Wolf here before, and I tend to think of it as a Kate Wolf song, but this is Fairport Convention playing it. And, you know, the lead singer, Sandy Denny, wrote the song, so it’s actually their song.

Just a matter of where I heard it first, really. They both died way too young, and were great folk singers. Though, if you listen to Led Zeppelin’s Battle of Evermore carefully, it’s actually Sandy Denny singing with Robert Plant, which is cool.

I’ve also been listening to Steeleye Span playing The Lowlands of Holland for some reason. It’s a great folk song that’s been covered by everyone and their mother, really. Note that the singer here is not Maddy Prior, but Gay Woods. This was actually off of Steeleye Spans first album, and she left the band before the next album.

This is sort of tangentially related to the last song, in that Steeleye Span was founded by a former member of Fairport Convention.

And when I say this songs been played by everyone, I mean it. Here is Dún an Doras playing it.

And here’s Celia from Salmon’s Leap singing it.

And lets round things off with Fairport Convention and the song The Hiring Fair.

“My trembling fingers touched her arm, and she placed them on her breast.”

Part of me thinks it’s romantic. And part of me is thinking “Damn, he’s getting lucky tonight”. ^_^

You know, I don’t think I’ve played Bobby McFerrin on here before. And he’s innovative enough that I really have to correct that.

Check out this performance of the song Drive by him. It’s frankly amazing. This whole performance is a cappella, using his chest as a drum, and singing and making music with both his mouth and throat. I have no idea how he manages it.

This video of I’ve Got A Feeling, now, is just amusing to watch. I think the woman he gropes during the song is his wife. She’s certainly cracking up during the whole thing. And so was I, watching, of course.