Colorado metal band Allegaeon shared a video for their new cover of Wham’s “Last Christmas,” featuring Cattle Decapitation’s Travis Ryan and The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad on vocals. It’s a technical death metal rendition of the 1984 classic that rides the line between cheesy and brutal at a breakneck pace.
The track starts out with a Wham-faithful synth lead before launching into a full speed attack led by Brandon Park on drums and the rest of Allegaeon playing the intro melody as a metal riff. Strnad goes for an especially cheesy vocal performance and Ryan goes fully guttural with his death growls.
In the video, the musicians struggle to put up holiday decorations, set a Christmas tree on fire and get a lot of eggnog on themselves. Mixed in, there’s also a lot of shots of them performing the track while wearing festive outfits.
Allegaeon announced in August that they’re working on a new album and shared two new singles at the start of December, the symphonic “Concerto in Dm” and acoustic B-side “In Flanders Fields.” Back in April, they had released a cover of Yes’ hit “Roundabout.”
Cattle Decapitation had a busy 2019 that ended with the release of their latest album Death Atlas. During the album rollout they also shared a short film named “The Unerasable Past.”
Members of The Black Dahlia Murder have been releasing covers all year, including renditions of Cannibal Corpse’s “Pick Axe Murders,” Scandal ft. Patty Smyth’s “The Warrior,” Faith No More’s “Everything’s Ruined,” Megadeth’s “Go to Hell” and Van Halen’s “Eruption.” They also spread some more Christmas cheer through their Yule ‘Em All performance. In April, they released an album called Verminous.