ICE NINE KILLS will release A Very Vicious Christmas, an eight-track EP of Christmas classics, digitally on November 9 via Fearless Records. The band revealed it on Sunday at their annual Silver Scream Con in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The songs were recorded as the soundtrack to "Terror Tram Starring Art The Clown", this year's Halloween Horror Nights attraction on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot. Back in August we reported that the band was scoring the ride with Christmas songs gone very wrong; now the music leaves the backlot for the first time. In the attraction, the Terrifier killer turns up far too early for Christmas with a bag of bloody presents and hijacks the tram for a holiday party of his own. It runs on select nights through November 1.
Frontman Spencer Charnas called the EP the band's "early holiday gift" and said they "immediately understood the assignment" once they were asked to score Art's assault on the tram. "Art loves Christmas," he added, joking that with lines like "oh what fun it is to die in a one hearse open slay" they weren't sure any children's choir's parents would sign off — but one did. He also thanked Terrifier writer and director Damien Leone and producer Phil Falcone for inviting the band "into their sandbox of bloodshed."
The partnership with the Terrifier universe has already paid off once: "A Work Of Art", the band's song for Terrifier 3, debuted at No. 3 on Billboard's Hot Hard Rock Songs chart, stayed there for 18 weeks and is closing in on 60 million streams.
It's a busy horror season for the Massachusetts metalcore band. Their "Welcome To Horrorwood" film series with AMC Theatres and Bloody Disgusting is running all October at about 300 AMC cinemas across the U.S., with Charnas introducing each screening and a matching ICE NINE KILLS video closing it. Earlier this year "Twisting The Knife", featuring Mckenna Grace and heard over the end credits of Scream 7, gave them their first No. 1 at Active Rock Radio.
A Very Vicious Christmas tracklist:
- Carol Of The Bells
- Jingle Bells
- We Wish You A Merry Christmas
- O Christmas Tree
- Joy To The World
- The Twelve Days Of Christmas
- Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies (Full Band Version)
- Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies (Orchestral Version)