Ep. LXII: 'The Bells of Christmas Chime Again' - Eddie Dunstedter

Here we go, folks.  Time to get back into some weirdness.  Some terrifying, soul-shattering weirdness.

Album Title:  The Bells of Christmas Chime Again

Album Artist:  Eddie Dunstedter

I'm not gonna lie here, folks:  I totally picked this up from Radio Wasteland (for a $1) knowing that it was going to be a complete train wreck.  I mean, c'mon - chimes and organ?  In the dollar bin?  You know what you're getting here.  

You can practically smell the moth balls. . .

The opening track on Side A of this album is supposed to be 'White Christmas,' which - you'd think - would be a pretty straight-forward affair.  You'd think, with 'chimes' and 'organs' involved, this was going to sound like an every other organ-heavy Christmas album we've covered in this here Record Odyssey of ours.  Heavy on the warbly church service vibe, visions of elderly parishioners quietly nodding off all about you.  Maybe some dead poinsettias strewn about the wood-paneled walls of the congregation, along with faded gold tinsel and dust-covered hymnals.

Well, if you can believe it, dear readers, that would have been waaaaay better than what we have here.

The Haunted Mansion, ca. 2019.

For the first twenty or so seconds of the opening track, I wasn't aware I was listening to 'White Christmas' at all.  Instead, it sounds like the opening foreboding of Disney's Haunted Mansion, the eerie organ beating on in a sluggish cadence like it's summoning forth the deceased.  There's a few descending chord progressions, too, that seem to go on for minutes, as if the tormented soul hammering away on this organ is resolute in pounding EVERY. LAST. KEY. on the way down to the lowest possible octave.  

Straight down into the bowels of Hell.

Look, I know I sometimes have a flair for the dramatic, but if you were to listen to this album yourself, you'd see where I'm getting such horrifying imagery.  I've seen the likes of Tennessee Ernie Ford a time or twelve in this series of mine, but at least with that piece of absolute shit you have someone singing.  Here, without any lyrics whatsoever to remind us of a human presence in this recording, we're left to our own macabre imaginations.  

And it ain't pretty, folks.

May he haunt your dreams. . .

Dungeon music from The Legend of Zelda kicks of 'Winter Wonderland,' which later becomes a full-tilt, seedy carnival jamboree.  'In the Clock Store' sounds f***ing insane.  Cuckoo clocks and autonomic bird sounds over an organ?  With an overall German glockenspiel hammering away in a relentless swirl of noise?  It sounds like the sorta shit you'd hear in the heads of occupants in a Bavarian insane asylum.  Oh, and 'Ring Christmas Bells'?  The shit sounds like it's being played by the Phantom of the Opera on a two-week bender.

I wish I were over-exaggerating.  I really do.

If you guys ever want to see what the face of pure evil looks like, America, I'll show you:

Don't look directly into his eyes.

VERDICT:  1/10 - Ohio (This is the scariest Christmas album I've heard in a long, long time.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian