For over a decade, Pennsylvania metalcore band August Burns Red have been recording covers of Christmas music. Last year they recorded “Up on the Housetop” and the year before that “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” It’s been a few years since they’ve tackled a classical piece – the last one was the “Carol of the Bells” back in 2021.
For this year’s Christmas cover, they’ve tackled “The Waltz of the Flowers” from Act II of Tchaikovsky’s perennially popular Christmas ballet The Nutcracker. “The Waltz of the Flowers” is arguably one of the most famous pieces from the ballet; it concludes the orchestral suite that is played more frequently than the ballet as a whole and, of course, it’s in Fantasia.
August Burns Red begin their cover with a pick slide followed by melodic lead guitar with a chorus effect and blast drumming. The guitar plays the famous melodies and the blast drumming just dominates the mix. There is rhythm guitar and bass in there, but they are both way back in the mix so the focus remains on the melodic lead, which sticks to the melody and those pounding drums. To their credit, August Burns Red do manage to sort of approximate the blast drumming equivalent of waltz time for one section of the piece, which made me giggle appreciatively.
If you like the idea of metal covers of romantic music you will probably quite enjoy this. It’s exactly what you would think, just an aggressive, but still catchy, version of a piece of music many of us have heard way too many times. Check it out:
