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.

All right, today I thought it was time to play some anime related videos, so I figured I’d start out with an annoying (but catchy) anime AMV.

Take the song Butterfly, which already fits the category of annoying and catchy. Mix sounds from Pokemon into it. Then add video clips of Pokemon to it, and you get this Pokemon Butterfly Remix video. It works well.

For comparison, here’s the really bizarre video to the original song Butterfly (which is by SMiLE.dk). This is very much a WTF type music video. I swear someone involved in it was on drugs.

And here we have more IOSYS. The song seems to have several translations of the title, but I’ll go with Erin’s Clinic (That People Queue Up For). It’s a very catchy song, and I was able to find a version with good video and sound that was untranslated, and a translated version that the audio and video wasn’t as good for. Here are both, untranslated first.

Sorry about the delay on a post. I just haven’t really been inspired to write anything here. Here are a few things I’ve been listening to in the last few days:

Found this on last.fm’s Irish Coffee radio station. This is Regölés by Ghymes, and don’t even ask me to pronounce that. Really cool music, though. I don’t really get a chance to hear Hungarian music that often.

This is for everyone who was having trouble pronouncing the last song name. It’s listed as “Колыбельные мира. Идиш.”. I was able to find a translation of the lyrics, and they were listed as “Oyfn Veg Shteyt A Boym”. Nice Yiddish folksong, in any case, and the video seems to correspond pretty well to the song. Wish I could tell you who created the video or who the musician is.

This one is for anyone who is curious what the Cat Stevens song Wild World would sound like with lyrics in Zulu. And this is sung by Cat Stevens Steven Demetre Georgiou Yusuf Islam Yusuf.

It might be easiest to just call him the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens. He’s back to creating cds as Yusuf as of 2006, after his whole thing of changing his name to Yusuf Islam in 1977, converting to Islam, and abandoning music.

I was going to post another IOSYS song, but I found another song that intrigued me. I happened to stumble upon a song by the odd title of Peacebone being covered by JacobRuefer. The music video he posted set to scenes from Pokemon seems oddly appropriate, somehow. Very catchy cover.

Having heard that, I had to hear the original, by a band called Animal Collective. So I did. It’s a strange, oddly discordant song, set to a music video involving a girl dating a monster that looks like it’s off the set of Alien. I have to approve.

That said, I actually think Jacobs cover is cleaner, and catchier, and I actually found I enjoyed it more then the original. Still, here’s Animal Collective’s version, so you can judge for yourself.

Note: It’s growing on me on the second listen, but I still feel like I’m on the verge of a headache listening to the original because of what they did to the music in the background. I might just be somewhat sensitive to it…

I’m getting tired of these depressing songs about death. So I picked out a nice happy cheerful song today. About murder.

Well, you know how I like murder ballads. This one is by the band Steeleye Span (yes, I play them a lot), called Little Sir Hugh. You can see the lyrics here, but it’s basically about a little kid who accidentally kicks his ball in a castle everyones afraid of.

The lady of the castle leads him in the castle, stabs him, drains his blood, and throws his body in a well. (Which is probably a good reason to be afraid of the castle, really) Reminds me of Mr. Fox’s Garden, in a way. Which is another murder ballad I really like. Unfortunately, the only video on youtube I’ve seen of it wasn’t good quality…

Edit: Just as a side note, this is based on a historical murder, the death of Little St. Hugh of London.

Well, after that depressing post, back to folk music, I suppose. In this case, thought I’d revisit Steeleye Span.

Check this song. It is called Robbery With Violins, and is one of these fabulous juxtapositions of a traditional tune with modern instruments I occasionally find.

Since that was less then 2 minutes, lets throw in an utterly traditional tune, Si Bheag Si Mohr. You’ve heard it before. Everyone has. It’s played at every remotely Irish festival that ever exists. It’s a good tune, though.