Alternative rock artist Mark Lanegan has announced a new holiday album Dark Mark Does Christmas, which is set for release on December 4 via Rough Trade Records. This song is set to feature a mix of covers and originals, which take the Christmas spirit and morph into a dark melancholic experience.

PRE-ORDER UP!@marklanegan – ‘Dark Mark Does Christmas 2020’

2020 has been a dark year and so to end the year Mark Lanegan returns as Dark Mark and releases a full Christmas album.https://t.co/COP1SZbAsk pic.twitter.com/TLv7VOodvW

— Rough Trade (@RoughTrade) September 29, 2020

This project is styled after a limited edition 12″ record he released during a 2012 tour, where he covered a variety of folksy Christmas songs. This upcoming project will feature all of the songs that were a part of the original 12″ with the addition of five new songs.

Some of the covers that will be a part of the project include “Burn The Flames,” originally recorded by Rocky Erickson and The Everley Brothers’ “Christmas Eve Can Kill You,” which Lanegan plans on making even more atmospherically dismal. Lanegan will also debut the new track “A Christmas Song,” which is described as “delicate and heartbreaking” according to Rough Trade.

Lanegan released his most recent studio album Straight Songs of Sorrow earlier this year. He has also taken the time to team up with Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs and Dylan Carlson for two separate releases this year.

“With Straight Songs of Sorrow, the listener is getting just what is advertised. Lanegan goes very deep into his own mind in search of answers, rationale and past feelings,” mxdwn reviewer Matt Sedgwick explained. “This album comes at an appropriate time: as instances of uncertainty and death cast an expansive shadow over mankind and the search for answers and meaning has become a more constant fixture of life in both a practical and philosophical sense, it offers commiseration.”

Dark Mark Does Christmas

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat