The Xmas Jukebox: Clouds Taste Satanic’s All I Want for Christmas Is Your Soul

Our New Christmas Music Countdown begins with a doom-metal take on a collection of festival favourites… including THAT Mariah Carey tune.

Ahh, Christmas music – the very height of tweeness and shameless commercialism, and yet a phenomenon that many acts find it hard to resist. It might be a determined attempt to create a new perennial classic that will ensure you the sort of happy retirement based on royalties from one song alone that numerous acts have as an option, or – more often – it might be a piss-taking bit of seasonal jollity, a chance to show that you are not just a po-faced serious artist but rather someone with a sense of fun. Or, occasionally, it might be an earnest attempt to create a piece of art.

Whatever the reason, we feel confident that we’ll be able to run an online advent calendar of new tracks in the run-up to Christmas Day – though we’re not going to guarantee a daily entry, the signs so far are positive – at least in volume, if not necessarily always in quality. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, so buckle up…

First up, something genuinely entertaining: a four-track offering from Brooklyn doom band Clouds Taste Satanic, who have put the dark riffing aside – sort of – for a festive offering called All I Want for Christmas is Your Soul. Ho ho ho. As the title suggests, the opening and main track is a metalised version of that unavoidable Mariah Carey song, here presented as an instrumental that sounds weirdly very much like one of the festive rock ‘n’ roll classics of the early 1970s – think Slade, Wizzard or The Wombles – that perhaps shows why Carey’s song has become one of the definitive tunes of the season. It’s got a timeless tune at the heart of it and adapts itself to whatever form of music that you care to transform it into – much as Merry Christmas Everyone or I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day had before it. The song, as presented here, is glam-pop brilliance, an odd thing to say about a band that we might normally expect to be playing murkily heavy occultist sloggers. It’s quite the thing.

The rest of the EP is more of a mixed bag. You’re a Mean One Mr Grinch is more what you might expect from doom metallers and is essentially unrecognisable if you didn’t know what was being covered. It’s a solid piece in its own right but you won’t be rocking around the Christmas tree to it. Christmas with the Devil is a Spinal Tap cover and why bother trying to do a satirical version of what is already a comedy tune? Little Drummer Boy, on the other hand, feels strangely festive in a dour way (as the original song is, thinking about it). Didn’t Christopher Lee do a metal version of this some years back though? You might be able to use this vocal-free version as a sort of karaoke track for performing Lee impersonations after a few brandies I suppose.

You can get all four tracks on Bandcamp at a ‘name your price’ deal, which is certainly worth a look. A quick warning though: Mrs R walked in midway through the opening track and immediately got the original song stuck as a most unwelcome earworm, showing that even covers of the song that everyone tries to avoid can be as dangerous as the original. Approach with caution.

DAVID FLINT

https://cloudstastesatanic.bandcamp.com/track/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-you

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