Christmas Music for the Apocalypse playlist!

Here it is! Your complete Christmas Music for the Apocalypse 2014. Great to listen as the ash falls like snow on your presents, or even if your Christmas just feels like the end of the world and you have an aggressive urge to subvert tradition.

Track listing is below, along with the post for each track, which contains links to where you can buy/download it.

List:

1. Christmas at Ground Zero – Weird Al Yankovic
2. Chiron Beta Prime – Jonathan Coulton
3. Carol of the Old Ones – H P Lovecraft Historical Society
4. A Post Apocalyptic Christmas – Art Elliot
5. Death to the World – H P Lovecraft Historical Society
6. Christmas with the Devil – Spinal Tap
7. Post Apocalypse Christmas – Gruff Rhys
8. Stop the Cavalry – Jona Lewie
9. Zombie Christmas – Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler
10. Old Men’s Brains (A Zombie Christmas) – TooFarTV
11. Jingle Hell – Christopher Lee the only video containing the full song got deleted. You can watch the official video here.

You might also enjoy the Christmas Music for the Apocalypse list I did a few years ago for Girls Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse. It has some overlap, but there are a few songs there that aren’t here and vice versa (quite a few more H P Lovecraft Historical Society tracks).

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 11: Jingle Hell

[Edit: Sadly the only video with the whole song in it got taken down. The official vieo only has bits of the song, but you can view it here.]

Last, but by no means least, ‘Jingle Hell’, by Sir Christopher Lee. Knight of the British Empire; Count Dracula; Count Dooku; Saruman; heavy metal god; and, with this song, oldest singer ever to enter the charts, if I don’t have room to honour Christopher Lee’s contrbution to dark Christmas music, I might as well pack up and go home.

You might wish to quibble at the inclusion. Is going to Hell at Christmas strictly apocalyptic? My answer: yes. Yes it bloody well is. Hell on Earth fits the description to me, and if it doesn’t for you, then, well… Christopher Lee.

You can buy ‘Jingle Hell’ from Amazon as a part of the ‘A Heavcy Metal Christmas Too’ EP (yes, this is his second Christmas EP), as well as from iTunes.

 

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 10: Old Men’s Brains (A Zombie Christmas)

‘Old Men’s Brains’, by TooFarTV, is another favourite of mine from the niche genre of zombie-themed Christmas songs. Probably the most graphically gory song in the list, it’s hard not to love a song with lyrics like:

They will eat your face

Gargle with your phelgm

They will not stop until

We’re all undead like them.

The sweet, distinctly Christmassy tune (based on ‘Old Toy Trains’, by Roger Miller) pairs perfectly with the cheerfully violent tale of survival in a zombie apocalypse.

And you can download the song for free!

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 9: Zombie Christmas

Apologies I missed posting the last couple of days. The trouble with freelance work is that sometimes you have to drop everything and work until the thing is done. Anyway, by way of apology, today is going to be an apocalyptic Christmas bumper pack, starting with ‘Zombie Christmas’ by Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler.

‘Zombie Christmas’ is my real find this year: original, indie work that’s been professionally produced with a great zombie-themed video to boot. Any song with lyrics like ‘Christmas has time has come/Oh man you’d better run, run run’ is alright in my book.

Buy it from iTunes.

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 8: Stop the Cavalry

Sometimes the apocalypse is mainstream. Jona Lewie’s ‘Stop the Cavalry’ is probably the best known song in this list, expressing fears of nuclear destruction and unending warfare. ‘Mary gladly waits at home/In the nuclear fallout zone’ our hero sings, expressing the Cold War fear of the Bomb, whilst tying the fear of that specific time to a wearyingly timeless one: ‘I have had to fight/Almost every night/Down throughout the centuries’.

Sometimes the doom that looms is not disease or zombies or natural disaster, it’s just humans, doing what humans do. And that’s as true at Christmas time as at any other.

You can buy ‘Stop the Cavalry’ by Jona Lewie on Amazon and iTunes.

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 7: Post Apocalypse Christmas

Gruff Rhys’s ‘Post Apocalypse Christmas’ somehow mixes bleak with chipper for this apocalypse themed Christmas number. It comes from his three track secular album, Atheist Xmas EP, and while I remain puzzled as to why ‘secular’ seems to have been interpreted as ‘bleak’, it’s a fun little song for the apocalypse survivor.

You can buy Atheist Xmas EP from Gruff Rhys’s website or from Amazon or iTunes.

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 6: Christmas with the Devil

According some Christian views of the apocalypse, there will be a time of tribulation when the Antichrist or Devil will reign on Earth. Christmas would certainly be a special time of year then. Please enjoy Spinal Tap’s ‘Christmas with the Devil’ as a celebration of this particularly dark time of year.

Thanks to @nickjbarlow on Twitter for pointing me this way!

You can buy this song from Amazon and iTunes.

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 5: Death to the World

Another choice carol from the H P Lovecraft Historical Society, ‘Death to the World’ celebrates the waking of Lovecraft’s most famous slumbering monster, Cthulhu, who rises from sunken R’lyeh to destroy the world.

Invading the dreams of the unwary with mind-bending visions of madness, the winged and betentacled Cthulhu makes a striking figure, and his rising is certainly a dramatic way for the world to go this Christmas, as the stars align…

‘Death to the World’ comes from the H P Lovecraft Historical Society’s second seasonal album, An Even Scarier Solstice, and can be bought online from their website.

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 4: A Post Apocalyptic Christmas

Just ten days until Christmas and it’s time for my favourite apocalypse Christmas song: Art Elliot’s haunting ‘A Post Apocalyptic Christams’. The parodies and novelty songs are great, but I think this song is simply beautiful, really hitting a chord with what us apocalypse lovers find appealing about the genre in the first place. I encapsulates a sense of loss and aloneness amongst the fragments of culture and civilisation that remain, culminating in the final refrain: ‘oh come, oh come emmanuel’. I get chills every time.

Art Elliot is an awesome independent musician with a focus on bleak and apocalyptic folk art. His website is full of awesome music for the apocalypse-lover’s heart. You can buy ‘A Post Apocalyptic Christmas’ from Bandcamp for as little as $1, and I really strongly encourage you to.

Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse, No. 3: Carol of the Old Ones

‘Carol of the Old Ones’ is just one of the many apocalyptic Christmas songs produced by the H P Lovecraft Historical Society, bringing an end to the world in the style of the Elder Gods.

For those unfamilliar with the work of H P Lovecraft, he was a prolific writer of horror stories concerning ancient evils awaking from their slumber bringing madness and destruction to humans who can barely comprehend their existence. The H P Lovecraft Historical Society celebrates this work in song with albums such as A Very Scary Solstice and An Even Scarier Solstice, which you can order from their website.

This song is from A Very Scary Solstice and, unfortunately, it cannot be downloaded separately. However, you can be assured that several other songs from the album will appear in my apocalyptic list of Christmas music, and the whole album is very much worth your time and money.

I’m building a playlist of Rhube’s Christmas Music for the Apocalypse on YouTube. It will be complete on December 24th, ready for you to use in your Christmas celebrations (if you celebrate Christmas) or for your general good cheer at the wintery end of humanity. All embedded videos are a part of the playlist, but you can also view the playlist from the beginning here.