by Joe Wallace

Let’s start with the obvious. This may look, feel, and SMELL like a Creed record, but it’s not. Wait–you mean the guy on the left ISN’T a cartoon rendition of that whiny lead singer with a pair of horns on?

Oh, sorry then.

But if you actually heard this record, you’d SWEAR it was Creed–it’s every bit as wretched and filled with half-baked, warmed over doofus-shite. Some might argue that it’s not a fair comparison to put Creed side by side with Christmas At The Devil’s House, but lest we forget, Creed was responsible for bringing generic guitar twaddle with what sounds like Eddie Vedder’s untalented half-brother at the mic.

And they had a right-wing “family values” type songwriting agenda which makes all their lyrics as suspect as John Travolta’s motives for making “Battlefield Earth”. Whenever you hear “I love you,” lead singer boy is probably talking about Mister God. Yuck.

Christmas At The Devil’s House is every bit as uninspired–it’s that “Let’s play classical music with metal guitar noises” crap that makes people vomit uncontrollably after exactly ten seconds.

The album cover itself is merely goofy–but it promises something the record itself won’t deliver. WHERE ARE THE SATAN-THEMED CHRISTMAS SONGS? It’s almost July at the time of this writing, which means Christmas in July sales and other nonsense to do with Santa wearing a bathing suit.

But there’s no real presence of Satan on this album unless you think a metaloid cover of “Greensleeves” is a secret message from The Dark Overlord commanding us to slaughter our neighbors and make love to the parrot.

This album wouldn’t really make it into the Turntabling WTF gallery of crap record covers except for the fact that you really, really expect the record to have more Satan on it. Instead, you wind up feeling cruelly misled by the crude artwork. And maybe that’s the Devil’s trick; if you were dumb enough to PAY for this you got what you deserved?