Yes, we know there's been plenty of heavy metal Christmas in the past, and of course it's been featured here at Mistletunes. If you looked at the title and said, here's a heavy metal band from Hawaii making a Christmas album for 2014, go to the head of the class. They just came out of an IndieGoGo fundraising round to get this out in time for Christmas, and if you're afraid of having an incomplete collection of metal Christmas tunes, you need to have this. It's 16 covers of favorite holiday tunes from the antique and pop realms plus one original, the extra-fast-tempo "Christmas Without You." The antique carols like "We Three Kings," "O Come O Come Emanuel," "Hark The Herald Angels Sing," "Joy To the World" and "Do You Hear What I Hear" sound about the way you'd expect, but you don't often hear a guitar freakout leading into "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts)," a waltz of martial drums backing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," or harmony lead guitars scorching their way into "Baby It's Cold Outside." They didn't really touch the Pretenders' "2,000 Miles" except to hammer the beats and crunch up the guitars a bit, and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" reveals that Phil Spector was heavy metal before there was such a thing. As folks in the metal realm are really into virtuosity, it's no surprise this collection sounds really good, especially for an indie production. (Of course, there really aren't any major labels to support old-school metal anymore, right?) If you dug this, the same cast of characters preceded this album with a full-length galvanized version of "Jesus Christ Superstar."
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