Twisted Sister – A December To Remember

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Demolition Records
Produced by Mark Mendoza

This is, implausible or not, exactly what it appears to be. Twisted Sister, the over-the-top glam rockers, doing a Christmas concert. A live set that is an even split between classic tracks from their back catalogue and well-known Christmas tunes played in their renowned punk-metal style.

On the face of it an utterly ridiculous premise, I think everyone would agree. But I was fully prepared to admit defeat if this turned out to be a ripping-roaring holiday treat. It is, after all, the right time of year. Unfortunately there’s only one thing worse than a band covering Christmas songs, and that’s a metal band covering Christmas songs. This probably doesn’t come as the greatest of surprises to most readers, and it doesn’t to me either, but as I said, I was prepared to be proven wrong.

Proving me wrong turned out not to be the only task Twisted Sister have failed to achieve with this release. Even if you ignore, as I was happy to do, how ridiculous a couple of the members of the band look dolled up in their wigs and make-up, the camera work here is amateurish at best. A lot could have been overcome had this been a crisp, professionally shot show, but the limited and poorly chosen camera angles, occasionally unsteady camerawork, lacking colour definition and the apparent presence of just two colours of lighting (red and yellow) do nothing to eliminate the uneasy thought that you are watching a bunch of middle-aged men somehow badly executing the simplest of sing-a-long songs.

Even then, when they break into The Price, the band clearly have some chops, and we all know what fantastic material Dee Snider has produced with the criminally underrated Desperado and Widowmaker, but the rest of the Twisted classics that split up the holiday songs somehow lack any kind of edge and may as well have just been playbacks.

Surprisingly, as good as Snider’s voice sounds on more challenging material like that found on the records issued by his other projects, he manages to be flatter than ever on all of the carols and even some of Eddie Ojeda’s guitar histrionics can’t save some amazingly poor renditions of songs like O Come All Ye Faithful (which turns up twice in the bonus features as well), White Christmas and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

Remarkably it gets worse at the end with Heavy Metal Christmas (The Twelve Days of Christmas) which essentially involves all five members of the band singing the various items (leather jackers, spandex pants and pentagrams etc) one at a time while trying to hold up the correct hand-written cards for the audience. We even get a version of this recorded live in the studio in the bonus features. What’s worse is the video quality of this performance is twice as good as the main concert feature.

The final bonus features are footage of JJ French and Mark Mendoza orchestrating a choir of hicks (and one very attractive young girl) to record the backing vocals for the studio A Twisted Christmas album, released in October 2006, and an interview. Unfortunately the DVD is already doomed by this point. It’s not even worth while for the performances of the old Twisted Sister songs.

Even if you don’t like Christmas songs, and even if you don’t rate Twisted Sister, this could still have turned out to be a decent product. But elements which go towards making a good DVD are as lacking as the band’s performance was and means this DVD lives up to that initial feeling of “seriously?” you had when you first started reading.

“ utterly ridiculous ”

Tracklist: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas / Shoot ‘Em Down / I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus / The Fire Still Burns / You Can’t Stop Rock & Roll / White Christmas / The Price / O Come All Ye Faithful / I’ll Be Home For Christmas / Burn In Hell / Silver Bells / I Wanna Rock / Heavy Metal Christmas (The Twelve Days of Christmas) / We’re Not Gonna Take It
Bonus Features: O Come All Ye Faithful (Music Video) / O Come All Ye Faithful (Animated Video) / Heavy Metal Christmas (The Twelve Days of Christmas) (In-studio Performance) / Mendoza’s Choir / Band Interviews

Written by Andy Lye
More: Hard Rock, Live DVDs, Twisted Sister