A Twisted Christmas

Twisted Sister

Razor & Tie, 2006

http://www.twistedsister.com

REVIEW BY: Jeff Clutterbuck

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 12/30/2006

It takes a lot for me to hate a Christmas album. They can be clichéd and uninspired, but at the core they are still songs I treasure and love. A Twisted Christmas takes those sentiments and proves me completely wrong.my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

Let the record state I have never listened to a Twisted Sister album and know only a handful of their songs. Dee Snider, the Sister front man, is one of those guys that does interviews for VH-1’s I Love the _____ series, as well as hosts a weekly radio show playing nothing but bad hair pop-metal hits that should have died in 1990. Yet despite my prior lack of experience with the band, my thinking was along the lines of Han Solos’ “I have a bad feeling about this.”

I can get past the fact that “O Come All Ye Faithful” is a blatant, intentional reworking of “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” At least, I hope it’s intentional. The rest of the tunes are those classics everyone knows, such standards as “Jingle Bells,” or “White Christmas.” There is also the Sister version of the “12 Days Of Christmas,” entitled “Heavy Metal Christmas.” In it, Snider bemoans that he received two pairs of spandex pants and four quarts of Jack from his true love. Har har.

Unlike records like the Jethro Tull Christmas Album, these songs are by the numbers, hardly deviating from their familiar melodies. There is no problem with that usually, but come on, you have to bring something new to the table. Just playing these songs “heavy” has been done before; hell, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra has made a successful career out of it. Why else make a Christmas album if one is not going to try anything different?

In the end, that tells me this record was made for money alone. It gets Twisted Sister back in the “spotlight,” I suppose, but what should have been an amusing, hard-rocking Christmas album is dull and dreadfully clichéd. It sounds like these guys tried to make a “clever” album. They failed.

Rating: D-

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© 2006 Jeff Clutterbuck and The Daily Vault. All rights reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of Razor & Tie, and is used for informational purposes only.