Thrash metallers Megadeth put out their 14th studio album Super Collider in June, and the LP found the group testing the limits of its signature sound, namely on the banjo-infused bluegrass-metal crossover track The Blackest Crow. Now the veteran headbangers, whose biggest hits include songs like Symphony of Destruction and Peace Sells, are taking a real risk: Theyre releasing (gasp!) a holiday album, Thrashing Through the Snow: A Very Megadeth Christmas, on which they play teeth-gnashed aggro versions of Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy and Do You Hear What I Hear?
12 Metal Christmas Songs for Unsilent, Unholy Nights
Luckily for the kids in the infomercial that Jimmy Kimmel premiered on his show Monday night, its actually all a joke. The good-natured metalheads who once dressed in elaborate Halloween costumes for Kimmel and who are known for making their own spoofs look liked they had a lot of fun filming the bit. Dressed in holiday sweaters and khakis, frontman Dave Mustaine and Co. bash their way through the Christmas classics, adding their own signature spin on the lyrics, such as a few blah blah blahs in Drummer Boy and the proclamation, Its deeeaaath! to Do You What I Hear? The children present in the bit likely heard none of that, in that they had their hands over their ears.
The best moment, though, comes when they do a duet with indie rocker Jenny Lewis on the 1944 holiday classic Baby, Its Cold Outside. While she sings coolly and sweetly, her collaborators dig into their instruments in a way Ray Charles surely didnt on his hit recording of the track with Betty Carter. The Lewis-Megadeth union doesnt last long though, maybe because they performed it right after the band had made its holiday pitch for the camera: These are the carols, we grew up loving, and youll love them, too. Or Santa will kick you in the throat!