Based way up in The Yukon, Northern Canada – Metal artist Rick Massie knows all about Walking in a Winter Wonderland. He has been dazzling us with a series of releases over the years. His most surprising cut might his latest, an ingenious Doom Metal cover of the Christmas season classic “We Three Kings!” Out today on all streaming DSPs and Bandcamp, check out the track right now!
Rick commented:
“When I decided to come back to music in 2017, I had to relearn to play guitar, and learn how to produce my own music. One of the first things I did was try to create a Christmas cover song, since it’s a bit easier to try and recreate something you already know, rather than trying to create something completely new. It helped with practicing guitar, arranging, and producing. And as it turned out, I did the same thing the next year, and the year after. At this point, I consider it a Christmas tradition, and I\m hoping that I can keep it up every year.”
“I’ve always used singles as a way to exercise some creativity and try something different. While my album material generally has a more ‘defined’ sound (despite having multiple genres packed into a few minutes of music at times), I use singles to explore new sounds in a different way. My first single was pop-rock, my second single was a sort of horror movie soundtrack style… I guess you could say that I use singles to further explore the many sounds that make up my “real” songs.”
“How do Christmas and Doom Metal fit together? It sounds like an odd combination, but there are quite a few Christmas songs that have a fairly dark vibe, so from that perspective, “We Three Kings” sounded like an obvious candidate for a more Doom-based approach. And I know that I, and many others, have often taken great comfort in the dark melodies of Doom, just like many others take comfort in the light and memorable melodies of Christmas music. So for this song, I added some of my own original music that was inspired by the main melody (in true doom fashion), kept several verses from the original song (with some metal twists and turns), and then added my own new lyrics for the final chorus.“
“This song is probably a bit like how it would feel to have Paradise Lost, Ulver, and Woods of Ypres all show up and start singing carols at your doorstep.”
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