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Headbanging New Year
“We Wish You a Metal Xmas…and a Headbanging New Year” is the title of a Christmas album released by Eagle Rock Records back in October.
Wendy Dio was involved in putting the project together and, not surprisingly, several members of Purple family took part. Steve Morse contributed guitar to Santa Claus Is Back In Town, JLT sings on Rocking Round the Xmas Tree, and Ronnie himself delivered a very sabbathesque rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen with Toni Iommi on guitar. Eagle has an e-card with samples of three tracks on their website.
For the convenience of your Christmas shopping, here are Amazon links:
(And this is that time when we remind you that by doing Amazon shopping through links on our site you don’t pay anything extra, but help keeping THS alive.)
Track list:
- Run Rudolph Run (Lemmy / Billy F. Gibbons / Dave Grohl)
- Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Alice Cooper / John 5 / Billy Sheehan / Vinny Appice)
- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Ronnie James Dio / Tony Iommi / Rudy Sarzo / Simon Wright)
- Little Drummer Boy (Dug Pinnick / George Lynch / Billy Sheehan / Simon Phillips)
- Santa Claus Is Back In Town (Tim “Ripper” Owens / Steve Morse / Juan Garcia / Marco Mendoza / Vinny Appice)
- Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (Tommy Shaw / Steve Lukather / Marco Mendoza / Kenny Aronoff)
- Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer (Ace Frehley / Billy Sheehan / Greg Bissonette)
- Rocking Round the Xmas Tree (Joe Lynn Turner / Bruce Kulick / Rudy Sarzo / Simon Wright)
- Silent Night (Chuck Billy / Scott Ian / Jon Donais / Chris Wyse / John Tempesta)
- Silver Bells (Jeff Scott Soto / Carlos Cavazo / James Lomenzo / Ray Luzier)
- Deck the Halls (Oni Logan / Craig Goldy / Tony Franklin / John Tempesta)
- We Wish You A Merry Xmas (Geoff Tate / Doug Aldrich / Chris Wyse / Ray Luzier)
Thanks to Black-Sabbath.com and Daniel Bengtsson for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
The first track is about all that interests me here, Lemmy doing anything but Lemmy is always entertaining, such as his take on the Beatles “Back In The U.S.S.R.”
November 24th, 2008 at 18:04Are those all covers? I’m not interested to buy the CD, except there’s a DVD or free listening. Actually, I don’t like Christian rock. Jars of Clay for example. It’s just a bit strange for me. Headbanging in Christmas??
Better listening to another new Christmas album.
Btw, it’s wonderful to see all these rockers playing music together.
November 25th, 2008 at 08:09I´d avoid these crappy x-mas albums at all costs….what´s the point? No matter how good the musicians are if the music´s cheesy and lame,besides….one can only play the damn thing once a year!
November 25th, 2008 at 08:56But as Crimson Ghost says………it has Lemmy on it! Id buy it just for that……
Shit JLT!!…….second thoughts
November 25th, 2008 at 09:26DREAM LINE-UP,WONDERFUL! I WANT IT!
November 25th, 2008 at 10:57I m dreaming of a…….
November 25th, 2008 at 12:13great summer.
stefan: Actually you’d be surprised. I have a great time crankin’ all the Metal X-Mas CDs year round. Here, if you don’t have these, FIND THEM….
“Gary Hoey” (great guitarist) has 3. “Ho Ho Hoey” 1-3.
“Merry Axemas” volume 1&2. (Various Artists) such as ‘Sykes, Trower, Nugent, Vai, Wylde, Morse, Schon, all the big boyz.
These are rippin’ instrumental CDs and you will find yourself listening to them year round.
Then there are some less “All the Time” stuff but still good…
Glenn Hughes ‘A Soulful Christmas’…(more traditional).
Blackmore’s Night’s Christmas EP…(nice, but again, traditional).
Just a few off the top of my head….
And the one from this Post, “We Wish You a Metal Xmas…and a Headbanging New Year”.
The instrumental issues are the most favorable due to just being crankin’ metal versions of some great tunes. Also, there are some ‘Original’ tunes on some of these. But once lyrics come in, they become more in tune for Just the Holiday time.
I just got this one and haven’t had a chance to listen to it in it’s entirety yet, but I think it will be a pretty good listen. Besides, ALICE is on it. How bad can it be?
Cheers and Merry Fucking Christmas!!!!!!!!
November 26th, 2008 at 02:09I liked the ORIGINAL Motörhead,with the great Eddie Fast Clark…I love his playng,rude punk and rock bluesy riff….
now Motörhead are too much noise metal,too fast,the sound has changed on worst….I don’t like their new releases.
I saw Lemmy once to play on stage many years ago to play the song ROSALIE (by Thin Lizzy):
very cool.
ciao!
November 27th, 2008 at 10:30cheers!
the best song is the one from joe lynn turner..not bad ripper and steve morese and geoff tate…
November 28th, 2008 at 14:16Like Tracy,I’m a sucker for rockin’ guitar-based Christmas tunes,so I ordered this CD as soon as I saw the post.
November 28th, 2008 at 22:50Unlike Tracy,any Christmas disc only has a 3 week annual shot at airplay in my house.
How does “…Metal Xmas…” stack up ??
Based on just 2 complete listens,it’s generally delivered “over-the-top” with tongue planted firmly in cheek.It’s fun…with 1 glaring exception:the Death Metal growl of Silent Night is a steaming pile of reindeer shit !!(I’ll be skipping past that one from here on )
Suffice to say,this CD won’t be the audio accompaniment as my family sits down to Christmas dinner.It will,however,be the soundtrack to a few festive nogs and ales on the nights leading up to the New Year.
I love this!
December 1st, 2008 at 21:07A welcome change for the Jesus Child too 🙂
Annemie,
December 2nd, 2008 at 15:18perhaps that Jesus was born on 1971 and He was a Star,a Superstar,a real only one!
What a superb though 😀
December 3rd, 2008 at 19:14