#82: Midnight Mass 2023
BNB's annual holiday music roundup, plus my favorite albums of 2023
Those of us who grew up in the Catholic church know the singular pain of midnight mass. Imagine the boredom of church, but starting at 12am! Sure, it’s more festive than the average Sunday drudgery, but if there’s one thing the Catholic church knows, it’s how to drain the fun from everything.
But Band Name Bureau’s Midnight Mass isn’t my excuse to rag on the Catholic Church. (I do that year-round.) No, it’s our annual round-up of Christmas music from the depths of Bandcamp.
Let’s start with Hurly Burly for the Holidays Volume 26: Hurly Burly Saves Christmas Again by Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout. I’m not sure if they’ve actually done this 25 other times, but this edition features guest spots from Sundog and the Goop—together at last! While you can skip the caterwauling of “Frosty the Joe-Man,” “Feliz Navi-Ska” is fun.
Also fun: a chip-tune version of the same song. It’s on A Super Mario World Holiday.
N64-style covers are the specialty of LarryInc64, who’s similarly reimagined tracks by David Bowie, Rick Astley, and a whole bunch by the Beatles. I’m kind of partial to his version of “Dear Prudence.”
As inevitable as hearing “All I Want for Christmas is You” this time of year is the compulsion of metal, heavy, or otherwise “dark” artists to indulge in some low-hanging irony by releasing Christmas music. Often the shtick is pretty simple, like Grim Christmas: “Public domain Christmas carols converted to minor keys and reimagined in the context of black metal,” explains their Bandcamp. All 10 standards on Grim Christmas sound alike, so one track will do you plenty:
Speaking of Mariah Carey’s inescapable classic, “Instru-Metal Post Demonic Doom” group Clouds Taste Satanic covers it on All I Want for Christmas is Your Soul. Given their bio, band name, and the cover art…
…you’d expect something commensurately ominous, but Clouds Taste Satanic’s cover is downright accessible. Unlike Grim Christmas, they didn’t transpose the song into a minor key.
It’s melodic enough to soundtrack the climax in a Christmas TV movie where the “edgy” character finally gets into the holiday spirit. Picture it: She abandons the black clothes and sardonic disposition that are keeping her from loving the sexy-but-basic baker in the small town where she’s stuck with family for the holidays. She dons some cheerful holiday clothes and runs to his shop just before it closes on Christmas Eve, and—just as the final notes of Clouds Taste Satanic’s guitar solos ring out—she says she loves him and understands the true meaning of Christmas.
Kind of similar is Buried in Coal, whom we featured in last year’s Midnight Mass. This year they released Heavy Holidays for Heavy Times, and like last time, Seth Scantlen has enlisted his children in songs like “I Want A Eponymous Track For Christmas (Buried in Coal)”:
I don’t think I’ll get any presents this year
No, nothing at all
Not after what I did
Not after what I saw
I don’t think I’ll get any presents this year
Not after what I stole
The rocks will come tumbling down
I’ll be buried in coal
What a dad power move to have your kid sing that! It’s a fun family art project and a subtle reminder that presents can be revoked for bad behavior. And it’s not even the old parental standard of “Santa won’t bring presents this year,” but a Dickensian image of being buried in coal!
That’s nothing compared to this image, though:
The nuuttipukki was like Santa’s scary mythical analog who visited people in Finland on St. Knut’s Day (January 13) to take their leftover food and booze. In Finland, men would dress up in fur and goats’ heads and go house to house demanding booze. According to All Things Nordic:
If a household rejected his demands, the Nuuttipukki would begin causing chaos and performing evil deeds in the home. The Nuuttipukki and his friends may scare your animals, destroy your garden, and even harass your children and servants. An old proverb from western Finland even claims, “Good [St.] Thomas brings Christmas, evil Knut takes [it] away.”
In reality, dudes would just get increasingly shit-faced as the night went on, and I’m guessing whatever “mischief” they created involved copious vomiting. These days, it’s kids who dress up as nuuttipukki and go to houses looking for candy, like Halloween.
Favoring the creepy original version of the nuuttipukki legend is Finland’s Bläckwåsh, who reimagine “Deck the Halls” as symphonic metal.
Aiming for both creepy and sexy is Kü, whose mythology is that she was a torch singer in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and all of her “legacy recordings” for Capitol Records are now available on Bandcamp.
If you’re dying to spend time on your phone away from family, there’s an especially detailed 1,200-word “historical overview” of Kü’s song “Kokain” on Bandcamp. It includes monster sentences like this:
So those few, poorly documented months the pair spent together, occasionally working on music and/or dance projects but, by Kü’s own account which is all we have, more often than not sprawled out together on the floor of Berber’s well-appointed apartment at the Adlon hotel in a blissed out state of either drug- or sexually-induced torpor, offer a fascinating insight into the Berlin zeitgeist when acts that would probably have landed one in jail 10 years previously could now make you a star.
My eyes quickly glazed over while cutting and pasting this, but maybe it’s just the thing you need when your dad starts talking about how woke culture has ruined America.
Do you think that juggalos ruined America? Then you’re probably not gonna like BAMbam the Voodoo Chi7d. Now I can’t say that he’s definitely a juggalo, but he’s from Michigan and looks like this.
His new holiday horrorcore album, Happy Birthday, Jesus, even has a song called “Happy Birthday, Jesus. Here’s a Machete.” A machete isn’t the same as ICP’s hatchet, but it’s close enough, right?
Other tracks include “Eat Yo Face (A Christmas Song),” “Santa’s Dead Now,” “Bad Tripmas,” and “Soaked Santa Suit.” Guess what it’s soaked in? “The streets are being stalked again by the freak in the blood soaked Santa suit!” say the release notes. Whoop whoop!
POST-SCRIPTS
Ever wonder how black metallers celebrate Christmas? Here you go.
My favorite albums of the year, in no particular order:
Samiam, Stowaway. The Bay Area punk legends are barely still a band but somehow making some of their best music 34 years since forming. It makes no sense, and I love it. (Anti-Matter’s recent interview with singer Jason Beebout is required reading for fans.)
Shit Present, What Still Gets Me. I predicted this would be one of my favorites of 2023 in my interview with singer-guitarist Iona Cairns, and I was right. “Fuck It” is awesome, and the title track is heartbreaking and enraging at the same time.
Teenage Wrist, Still Love. These guys are straight outta ’90s alternative radio, yet I’m into it? “Sunshine” could’ve come out in 1997, and Still Love has Hum vibes.
Taking Meds, Dial M for Meds. This is another one that sounds like it was released in the wrong decade. “Memory Lane” could be a lost Superdrag song.
Chappaqua Wrestling, Plus Ultra. OK, I promise this is the last one that sounds kinda ’90s. It’s Britpop in this case. Just check out “Full Round Table.”
ARXX, Ride or Die. British duo specializing in acerbic but melodic punk. The title track slays.
The New Pornographers, Continue as Guest. I didn’t find this as immediately grabby as some other New Pornos music, but I ended up listening to it a lot.
Mutoid Man, Mutants. Blistering, melodic hardcore/metal. These guys always deliver. Check out “Call of the Void.”
The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. Another solid one from the, sigh, sad dads. “Once Upon a Poolside” is goddamn devastating.
The Gaslight Anthem, History Books. It’s been a million years since I’ve had these guys on a year-end list—not since their classic, The ’59 Sound, back in 2008 (!)—but History Books feels like an evolution that still holds tight to what they do best.