Review of Austrian Death Machine - Jingle All the Way

It’s the holiday season, which means gaudy decorations are everywhere, traffic is worse if you live anywhere remotely close to a shopping center, and horrid music is playing in every possible corner of the store you just went into to buy eggs. Yes, it can get pretty intolerable, especially to a subset of people that often view themselves as the outside looking in. You may have wallowed into your little un-Christmas corner (none of us have those), crying about how alone you felt (nope), and asked yourself, “where, as a metalhead, is my jingly music to ring in the season?” (you didn’t ask yourself that).

Well, Tim Lambesis of As I Lay Dying seems to have asked that question and wanted to answer it with the second “holiday single” from his completely-unnecessary-but-fairly-entertaining side project Austrian Death Machine. Jingle All The Way is, fittingly, based on the 1995 Schwarzenegger stinker of the same name. (I know it’s a stinker because of the 15 percent it has on Rotten Tomatoes, not because I’ve seen it. I haven’t seen it, and if you think I should have watched it as research for this review, you expect too much of a review for Austrian Death Machine.)

Like past ADM releases, Jingle is a combo of cavemanish thrash, slammy hardcore and bits of Lambesis ’ full time act (the heavier generic parts… as opposed to the other generic parts). His respectable Ahnuld impression makes regular appearances, ensuring that there are zero questions about this project’s jackassery. Zero questions. And that is the small success of this thing: It is so completely and utterly devoid of seriousness that one can’t help but find some humor and fun in it, particularly considering the heavy-handed pretentiousness that Lambesis is normally known for. The pure stoopidity of tracks like “It’s Turbo Time” brings a certain charm, straight down to the Hatebreed bro-down. Some nice shredtastic guest guitar soloing is also surprising, and helps to lift these three mostly plain songs to something slightly more than just blatant derptitude. Slightly.

However, I count it a bit shameful that a Christmas single, with a Christmas cover, based on a Christmas movie, lacks even one Christmas song. (The project’s previous Christmas single had a cover of “Jingle Bells.”) If you’re going to dive this far into shticky schlock, go all in. Be as cheesedick as humanly possible and do a crossover version of “Silent Night” with death metal vocals or something. Regardless, there is moderate value to be found here, and those that count themselves fans of ADM (poor bastards) probably preordered one of the limited vinyl copies. If you still wanted some heavy metal holiday music (you didn’t), then you have to do what we’ve all done for years: blast At the Heart of Winter until the cold of Blashyrkh consumes you.

Merry Xmas, you fuckin’ maniacs.

Release Details

Austrian Death Machine

Jingle All the Way

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