King Diamond - No Presents for Christmas
Ok, first a brief apology for the notable lack of entries over the past couple of days - as you may have guessed I've been having computer problems to which the solution may have to be a late bid to Santa for a new laptop. Fortunately I've been very good this year. The concept of festive gifts also brings me rather neatly onto my next Xmas anthem from King Diamond, high-pitched warbler with hugely influential 80s metal tykes Mercyful Fate who kicked off his solo career in the mid 80s with this rather curious standalone single. 'No Presents for Christmas' is for the most part not massively different to his later solo material, all galloping riffs and demonic cackling with a lyrical focus on paperback horror themes. The track lumps together a series of festive musical snippets to lighten the mood from the rollicking metal on show and veers off into the sort of comic self-parody that you'd expect to hear on an Iron Maiden B-side from the same era rather than the genuinely spooky output of King's later releases. I'm not sure what his gameplan was when he released this, it was perhaps a spot of comic relief aimed at those who viewed him as a genuinely dangerous devil-worshipper or alternatively a defiant gesture to musical cynics who deemed the genre of heavy metal to be incompatible with Xmas music. Either way, for a guy who's spent much of his career denying Christ and singing into a bone crucifix you have to admit that 'No Presents' is quite the stylistic curveball.
No comments:
Post a Comment