Metal Underground.com

There’s another Christmas metal album available now, just in time for the holidays, but this one takes a darker turn focusing on the death metal aspects and perverting the classics with a touch of evil. The charging opening riff on “Unrest For Melancholy Men” piques the interest, but it then shifts gears towards the traditional Christmas sounds – albeit done at full volume with electric guitars – and the album arrives at its standard slow and plodding speed. When the vocals drop (or are just replaced by hellish screams without words) and the guitar acrobatics come out, the tune is actually surprisingly good.

There is one major undeniable problem to his effort: even when the lyrics are tweaked to be more evil, the famous Christmas tunes come off as silly when offered with a guttural scream. It doesn’t really matter how it’s dressed up, hearing the base “O Come O Come Emmanuel” or “We Three Kings” presented in mid-paced death metal just doesn’t really work. There’s a reason Christmas metal albums are novelties and not serious endeavors, and that reason is unfortunately present here.

That being said, there’s one gem on the disc that doesn’t just break that rule, it positively shatters it. The metallic rendition of “Nutcracker: Dance of the Sugar Plum” is undeniably awesome, and it had frankly better hit some movie or game soundtrack post-haste. Something truly awful in a holiday-themed horror movie needs to go down with that song as the backing soundtrack. “Greensleeves” also has its moments, going all-instrumental and tweaking the base formula a bit.

Existing fans of project mastermind J.J. Hrubovcak or his vocal-lending brother Mike may be more willing to forgive the faults, so the album may be worthwhile for some, but for most the majority of “Hellish Renditions of Christmas Classics” will be an amusing side note at best.