** As the year goes on, staff meetings at record labels likely get more and more ridiculous. Employees shout out to sign their friend’s awesome gore-grind band from Ohio, the one that has blastbeats, pig-squeal vocals, and socio-conscience lyrics; staff moan about the cancellation of the mid-year bonus (foretold in February); department heads fight over which bands get tour support (the bands who sell); and the crazy ones pitch hair-brained, possibly offensive (to the puritan) merch ideas for light-hearted metallers to blow their Christmas bonus on for no real reason other than to have a deep laugh (only with company) before the weather sucks hard for the next two months. So, here they are: the Top 5 Worst Metal-Related Christmas Gifts… Belated. Unless you’re paying for 1-2 day air.
5. Black Metal Coffee Insulator (HERE)
So, you’re evil. So, you’ve delighted in pictures of charred churches from faraway lands. So, you’ve put on corpsepaint on a non-Halloween day. So, you’ve ordered the latest Ondskapt album and praised the Great Lord it arrived quickly. All this evilness. Yet, you, supreme black metal commander, can’t handle the heat transfer from a cup of Joe to your delicate, spiked armband-making hands. Well, warrior of the night, Century Media has read your Twitter complaints about McDonald’s coffee and how those cup slip-ons always fall off. Hail!
4. Pentagram Christmas Stocking (HERE)
Naturally, a black stocking for the bad, bad boy. One who delights in devastating neighborhood snowmen. One who delights in snowballing motorists as they pass by. One who taunts the little kids walking to school (most take the bus). One who won’t say ‘grace’ at Christmas lunch with the fam. Well, Century Media, always the harbinger for Christmas cool, has a pentagram stock for lumps of coal, ash-colored bath soaps, and upside down toothbrushes.
3. Black Metal Christmas Ornament (HERE)
Century Media’s at it again. This time, they’ve taken a few different colored Christmas tree bulbs (white, red, green, black), slapped on slogans like ‘black metal’, ‘Have A Grim Day Christmas’, and ‘I Heart Black Metal Christmas’, as well as the visages of black metallers real and fake. For this particular bulb, the white bulb works well with the black pentagram. It’s guaranteed to stick out against other bulbs on the tree. Plus, if you order them all, order them in quantity, you can replace your merry old Christian tree with an unmerry new Satanic tree. Perfect for Church of Satan members or people tired of years of multi-colored yuletide oppression.
2. 2013 Christmas Sweater Sweatshirt (HERE)
This ugly mother of a sweater has been around for a few years. Yet, it still manages to catch our eye every December when we wish we thought of ordering it for our company’s “ugly sweater day”. Seriously, corporate America wouldn’t be able to process Baphomet against a festive field of red, white, and green. And those tiny upside down crosses? Almost imperceptible. And the backprint? Genius. Then again, for the true, this is pure, unbridled black metal iniquity. Making fun of a figure that originates from Occitan poems isn’t something the pure are terribly informed on, however.
1. Abbath Snowglobe (HERE)
Holy mother of awesome! A figure of black metal icon encased in a snowglobe? How could this be?! How did this not exist sooner. Apparently, this idea was from a Season of Mist staffer, spontaneously blurted out during a call with the label’s CEO. Not one to let a good moment pass, the CEO called the ungods of snowglobe manufacturing and so Abbath, in snow, it was. Mr. Abbath comes wiedling his trademark double-axe, donned in his trademark ravendark facepaint, and crouched as if emerging from the darkest cave in Norway. Sadly, this bad boy won’t be available until February 2016.
** PS. These are pretty awesome, actually. We can image worse gifts. Like socks, underwear, or bags of candy corn.
