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.

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.

Tim Maloney of Naked Rabbit (site here) has a talent for making films that make you go, “Hmm”. Big Dong – or as it should be titled, “Beeg DAAAHHHNG!” – is one of those films. Words truly fail me, so I’ll give Signor Maloney a shot at it:

Coming soon to a theatre near you, ”Big Dong” is a film from… somewhere – it’s not exactly clear from what country it originates. Kooky Hijinks, Wacky Fun, Slapstick Violence – “Big Dong” seems to have it all!

My only addition is that 2:25 is just… wrong.

Oh, and if you think you’ve seen Tim Maloney on this channel before, perhaps you have.

I HAVE RETURNED! I have swum through endless oceans of time and space, past the universe, past reason, PAST SANITY! in search of wisdom! knowledge! good schools! reasonable access to public transportation! AND WISDOM! I have sat with elders of a gentle race this world has seldom seen and talked of days for which they sit and wait, when all will be revealed. Ooooo, and it was heavy, baby! I BRING YOU!…

Um…

(searches pockets)

…Some crumpled cocktail napkins, half a circus peanut and a spiral-bound notebook with “BEWARE THE MIDGET” scrawled on every square inch.

Hmm.

Y’know, I was kind of thinking this Prometheus thing would be way cooler than this…

Anyway, you’re probably wondering why you haven’t seen me here since, dear gods, since August. Well, one reason is that I was just burned out from blogging. It happens… usually with a little more warning than I gave. I can’t believe that anyone missed me, but if you did, I’m sorry.

But I have another, much more legitimate reason for not blogging (at least for the last month)! That’s right, it’s National Novel Writing Month! 50,000 words in 30 days! Pure hell! Now I know what those American POWs felt like on the Bataan Death March… if those POWs had been forced to type over 200 pages of Courier New 12-point in 30 days! “Raust schnell, American dog! Your metaphors are trite and your plot derivative! Another night in The Box for YOU!” [1]

And you know what? I did it. I have a first draft of an urban fantsay novel about revisionist dragons, complete with one character undergoing a sex change when I realized I needed a romantic subplot. Now all I need is about 20 rewrites, and I’ll have my first novel!

Kill me. Just kill me now.

Anyway, I could continue Shanoah’s muppet thread with, say, this Baby Tooth version of a dragon dance, courtesy of MarshalGrover…

But I think, in honor of my novel about revisionist dragons, I think I’ll go with a short about revisionist dragons. This is Ritterschlag from the Institute for Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction Film Academie of Baden-Württemberg, the only movie that dares ask the question: “Why do dragons keep kidnapping fair damsels?”

Courtesy of axiomcodex.

You’re lucky I didn’t post something about sex changes.

[1] Yes, I know my Japanese are speaking German. And you know what? I don’t care.

Oh.

My.

God.

Those IOSYS songs are probaby the most evil things I’ve ever listened to. And you know what that means.

Yes! We must listen to more!

This is Itteyoshi. It’s not subbed, but has a guitar grind and a Japanese man doing crazy samurai yells. And, really, isn’t that all a song needs?

Not Work Safe, for a Very Bad Gesture made by those cat thingies.

Courtesy of jackkjack.

And this really isn’t related to the last post, either. I just like it.

This is Thee Oh Sees, live in Vancouver in March 21, 2008, with some freakadelic surf called Visit Colonel. Colonel Kurtz? Well, why not?

Courtesy of liam117.

Well, I know what  I do when the kawaii gets too thick and the cuteness so toxic it can eat through an I-beam in 15 seconds.

That’s right! I send in Flippy, my favorite Happy Tree Friend with deep-seated emotional problems!

This is MondoMedia’s Flippin’ Burgers.