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.

Oh, I know what route I go down when I experience too much kawaii, too, Sean.

Admittedly, it first involves porting it here, where everyone can see it. But afterward, there are antidotes. In this case, I got together with a friend from work after work and played a board game he has with him called Arkham Horror.

Cthulhu won the first game, but we managed to beat an elder god the second time, though we house ruled one or two things. (Mainly because of only having two players.)

In honor of that, I thought I’d play a short creepy animation called A Lovecraft Dream. I think it speaks for itself.

It may be a little late, but… a Joyous Summer Solstice to you and all yours.

I didn’t say we were Christians, Shanoah. I didn’t even say we were Christian Scientists. I said we were Christian Mad Scientists.

“Lessee here, take some of the less odious parts of the Bible, add a little apocrypha, a little Buddhism, a little gnosticism, a little discordianism, some fertility rites, some of the hotter goddesses, the Osiris-Horus myth without the creepy incest and necrophilia and stone phalluses, a piece of Lovecraft, a smidge of Douglas Adams and a couple nine-volt batteries… Voila! JESUS-STEIN! It’s alive! ALIVE! But only after three days!”

Or, if you prefer, Zombie Jesus.

Courtesy of pigeonfilm. Movie site here.

In other words, we’re pagan heathens who are going to burn burn burn.

Didn’t John mention UFO’s in conjunction with Yoko Ono in Out The Blue,  too? Interesting when there are recurring themes.

To give todays John Lennon song proper perspective, I’m going to do something rather unusual for this blog lately; play a song not by John Lennon. Here’s Bob Dylan with Gotta Serve Somebody.

All right, got it? Well, John Lennon heard this song. Apparently it upset him a bit, so he wrote this song, Serve Yourself, sung in psuedo-Dylan style. Rated not work safe for bad language, and stuff offensive to closeminded people of most major religions.

Theres a 8 minute version with less bad language, and without him trying to imitate Bob Dylans voice, too.

Well, Sean, I don’t think either of us could ever be the solid citizen fnord , the fnord happy fnord patriotic fnord blue collar worker fnord. We both tend more to be loners, outsiders, just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.

And I like it that way. There’s a reason why the song The Big Country appeals to me[1], with the chorus of:

I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
I wouldn’t live like that, no siree!
I wouldn’t do the things the way those people do.
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.

Hell, that’s half of why I ended up as a pagan and a Discordian. A religion that tells you that you don’t have to be mundane. You can leave Greyface behind you, play Mind Games with the world, and dance around with bananas in your underwear.[2]

I’m sure John Lennon felt the same way at times. He wrote this song, after all:

[1] And, yes, both songs in that post have been taken down by the man. fnord! Wonder if song content had any influence on that?

[2] The Monk realised that the God must be waiting for him to make an act of worship, so he reverently danced up and down twisting his fingers in his ears.
His God stared at him for a moment, caught hold of him, twisted him round, slammed him forward spreadeagled over the car and frisked him for weapons.[3]

[3] And yes, Sean, this is a direct quote from a book you’ve probably read…