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Christmas is Metal.

No, really. It is. It is known.

You need to trust me on this. It’s true. Christmas goes all the way up to eleven and then some…

If you still don’t believe me, take a good listen to the playlist below (turn the volume up first, obviously. This needs to be loud). Inspired by Judas Priest legend Rob Halford’s new Christmas album and the very metal image of… er… ‘Santa’ above, I decided to compile a brand new headbanging party Playlisting for the Festive season.

Now I love metal and I’m very fond of Christmas carols, so the combination of the two is definitely a winning one for me – and who could resist the one and only Ronnie James Dio belting out ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’? Or Rob Halford’s fabulously po-faced take on ‘Hark The Herald Angels Sing’? Or Twisted Sister kicking the living crap out of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ as only they can?

They’re all there, alongside Christmas ditties from metal legends such as Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Diamond Head, Christopher Lee (yes, that Christopher Lee, who was arguably the most metal human being EVER), Manowar, Alice Cooper, Spinal Tap (obviously)… There’s even a bit of punk lurking on there too – it may not be metal, but it’s certainly extremely noisy festive music and that will do for me!

My personal favourites on this playlist have to be the immortal Lemmy cranking out ‘Run, Run Rudolph’ in fine festive style alongside ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Dave ‘Mr Ubiquitous’ Grohl (nice), and Korn, of all people, metaphorically jumping up and down on the remains of the already naughty ‘Kidnap the Sandy Claws’ from the classic stop-motion animation Nightmare Before Christmas.

All this is, of course, good clean headbanging festive fun for the whole family (if your family are all metalheads like mine are, anyway…), so here’s to a very metal Christmas and a thrashingly good New Year!

Any suggestions? Have I missed anything? Leave a comment or tweet me.

For lots more Christmas reading (and viewing) from me, click here