Description
Various Artists – Punk Goes Christmas – Ruby Red Vinyl Record
Punk Goes Christmas takes the Fearless Records compilation idea into holiday territory, bringing together bands from pop-punk, emo, post-hardcore and adjacent scenes for a program that mixes original songs with aggressively personalized standards. The opening run establishes the balance. New Found Glory’s Nothing for Christmas is a compact original built around the band’s familiar melodic drive, while All Time Low’s Fool’s Holiday keeps the seasonal setting but writes from the perspective of a relationship already going wrong. Real Friends’ I Had a Heart pushes further toward the confessional side of the compilation.
The covers work because the bands are allowed to reshape the material instead of treating it as untouchable tradition. Man Overboard takes on the Kinks’ Father Christmas, a song whose class tension and guitar attack already sit comfortably near punk. The Summer Set turns This Christmas into bright modern pop-rock, preserving the melody while changing the surface. Crown the Empire closes the first side with There Will Be No Christmas, bringing a darker theatrical weight to the sequence. The side moves from quick humor toward genuine disappointment without losing the compilation’s brisk, accessible character.
Yellowcard opens the second side with Christmas Lights, followed by Issues’ version of Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. Jason Lancaster’s All I Can Give You shifts the mood toward a more intimate original, and the Ready Set’s I Don’t Wanna Spend Another Christmas Without You makes its premise clear in the title before delivering the large chorus expected from the project. Set It Off supplies the compilation’s most openly destructive holiday joke with This Christmas (I’ll Burn It to the Ground), while William Beckett closes with Do You Hear What I Hear?, giving a familiar carol a contemporary alternative-pop frame.
The roster captures a particular early-2010s scene at the point where pop-punk’s second and third generations overlapped. Established names such as New Found Glory and Yellowcard sit beside All Time Low, Real Friends, Crown the Empire and Set It Off, so the collection is not locked to a single production style. Clean pop hooks, heavier guitars, electronic touches and emo confession all appear within the same twelve tracks. The holiday subject provides the link, but the differences between the bands keep the album from sounding like a uniform label sampler.
Originally released in 2013, Punk Goes Christmas became one of the more durable seasonal entries in the long-running Punk Goes series. This 2024 Craft Recordings edition is the first reissue of that original collection on vinyl and uses a ruby red pressing appropriate to the title. UPC 888072618800 identifies this exact twelve-track edition. It should not be confused with the later deluxe digital configuration, with follow-up compilations, or with generic records titled Punk Rock Christmas; the artist lineup and sequence here match the original Fearless program.
The album’s strength is that it does not demand one fixed attitude toward the season. Some songs are sincere, some bruised, and some openly irreverent. The familiar covers give casual listeners an entry point, while the originals make the record useful beyond novelty value. On vinyl, the two-side structure sharpens that range: the first half gradually darkens, and the second reopens with a recognizable alternative-rock song before moving through longing, comedy and a final carol. It is a scene-specific holiday compilation with enough melodic variety to hold together as an album.
Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic
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