Holiday Metal

Metal is often regarded by the mainstream media as a bunch of fun-hating Satanists. While this may be true for majority of bands (screw you, fun!), there are some that just want to have a good time. There are certain bands out there that sacrifice every hope of ever being popular in order to release a holiday metal album. While this may work for pop artists making Christmas specials, who in their right mind wakes up in the morning wanting to listen to Manowar playing Silent Night? Oh wait...


Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to focus on two specific bands. One Christian (sorta) and one Jewish (not really) for the sake of diversity. Erlosung and Gods of Fire.

Erlosung is a band that hasn't actually released an album yet. Through some witchcraft though, they have an entire two Christmas albums available for listening to on their YouTube channel. Oh, and did I mention they play black metal? Well, they do.

Here is their biography from their Facebook page:

Erlösung is a Black Metal band started by Sebastian in the fall of 2008 just for the sake of creating metal. The project was well received and Sebastian took that as a sign to continue working with the project. In 2009 Marcellianus and John Quinn joined the band and for a short time they played together. However Quinn decided to take a different path in music and started a his own project Streetlight Sonata. At this point the band was joined by Stephanie who was to preform clean female vocals, but due to distance issues, it was too hard for her too keep up with the band. Marcellianus and Sebastian continued to play, but didn’t get much material recorded. To add to the problem, Sebastian was starting college in Statesboro but before he left, he and Marcellianus recorded the music video ‘Wall of Glass” before parting. Then in the cold winter of 2009, Marcellianus and Sebastian put together their first album, "Christmas ist Krieg." during the summer of 2010 Erlosung broke up, and Sebastian has now taken on the band as a solo project and is now working on the next Erlosung Full Length album.

I'm confused too. Their official website doesn't really help either. Here's a jolly Christmas song by them though.



The next band is Gods of Fire. They are another American band (Erlosung is American, right? I never really understood their bio.) who has actually officially released two albums. Their first album, Wrath of the Gods, is a Greek-themed standard power metal fare. For their second album though, they decided to do something a little different... and released Hanukkah Gone Metal.

The album features such classic Jewish stories as taking back the temple from dragons and escaping the evil Zeus-worshipping Egyptians. Wait a sec, has anyone told them that that's not exactly what happens? Oh well, the music they make is still pretty epic and awesome. Check it out for yourself.



Maybe holiday-themed metal isn't all that bad. Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

-Zombie Viking

P.S. Thank you Mike for showing me Gods of Fire.