Back catalogue: Metal

Review: Released almost 40 years ago, No Presents For Christmas was the ultimate anti-Christmas song from metal provocateur extraordinaires King Diamond. Originally landing in time for Chrimbo 1985, this latest 12" reissue immortalises the bizarre piece of metallic eccentricity for new generations to come, and even boasts 'Charon'; a deep cut from the band's seminal debut album Fatal Portrait, on the b-side. Elaborating on the new gaudy cover and reasoning behind the repress, the King himself has decreed: "Livia worked on the glass mansion on the cover - it's a mansion she designed that I just loved and said we must use this for something! The cover came out exactly how we wanted it to, and it looks like something you would find in the Christmas albums aisle alongside Frank Sinatra. It has the Christmas feeling, but with something dark and sinister when you examine it more closely. I look like a ghost - the ghost of trying to destroy Christmas!"

Review: The first King Diamond song to ever be released, 'No Presents for Christmas' was originally released in 1985, and now Metal Blade Records is heard reissuing this 2-track classic on vinyl. In the words of the King himself, who offered an up-to-date comment on the classic festive heavy metal subversion, not to mention its stonkingly eerie new album cover: "it looks like something you would find in the Christmas albums aisle alongside Frank Sinatra. It has the Christmas feeling, but with something dark and sinister when you examine it more closely. I look like a ghost - the ghost of trying to destroy Christmas!" Coming thick and fast with the just-as-hard headbanger 'Charon'; whichever Christmas ghosts you choose to conjure this year-end, no amount of wishful thinking can ever truly deny the omnipresence of the Ghost of Christmas Stinginess. Truly, with King Diamond, we are duly reminded that there is always a dark side to our cheer.