Thor
Christmas In Valhalla
Heavy metal and Christmas have long been natural bedfellows with their shared love of gaudy costumes, pagan myths and bacchanalian excess. So it seems odd that so few hard rockers have made festive albums.
Now veteran Canadian body builder and novelty glam-metal He-Man lookalike Jon Mikl Thor follows in the footsteps of Twisted Sister and Rob Halford with this collection of seasonally themed originals, which span the spectrum from kitsch dross to surprisingly decent old-school anthems. Gonna Have A Rockin’ Christmas and Slay Rider may sound dated and turgid, but Our Last Christmas is a gravel-voiced, straight-faced, harmony-stacked power ballad with November Rain overtones. Thor veers off the Yuletide theme in his sevenminute goth-metal chugger
Lend Me Your Ears and booming Rammstein-on-a-budget apocalypse anthem If Tomorrow Never Comes, but the weirdest and best thing here is Cold Saint Nick, which recasts Santa’s busiest night as a macabre electro-rock murder ballad about brain-eating demons.
And that, of course, is the true meaning of Christmas.
Stephen dalton