Mariah Scary season is upon us. Horror-metal icons Ice Nine Kills have unleashed A Very Vicious Christmas, an eight-track festive bloodbath that gives horror fans and metalheads their own definitive Christmas soundtrack. Created for INK’s collaboration with Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, these gleefully gruesome reimaginings of Christmas classics are out now via Fearless Records and available to stream digitally with vinyl also available to pre-order HERE with a playlist of visualizers of each track available to watch HERE.
The songs on A Very Vicious Christmas brought Ice Nine Kills’ festive bloodletting to fans on both coasts. At Universal Studios Hollywood, they soundtracked “Terror Tram starring Art the Clown,” accompanying the killer’s blood-soaked takeover of the historic backlot as he arrived too early for Christmas and hijacked the tram for his own deeply unholy holiday celebration. The songs also featured in the downtown clown area of Universal’s Orlando park, spreading INK’s freshly butchered Christmas cheer across the country. Now fans can bring the carnage home for the holidays.
And what a Christmas dinner conversation starter it is. “Jingle Bells” trades wholesome winter scenery for “mistletoe-tags” and a “one hearse open slay,” whilst “The Twelve Days of Christmas” delivers five broken bones, four missing teeth and a trip to the mortuary. Even the children’s choir gets in on the festive dismemberment on “O Christmas Tree”. Across the collection, beloved seasonal standards emerge with their lyrics freshly butchered and Art the Clown firmly installed as the guest nobody should have invited down the chimney.
Produced by Spencer Charnas, Joe Occhiuti and Steve Sopchak, A Very Vicious Christmas also includes full-band and orchestral versions of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”, both featuring orchestration by Francesco Ferrini. Consider the annual Christmas playlist officially possessed.
Ice Nine Kills frontman Spencer Charnas shares:
“It’s a gift for us to present our beloved Psychos with exactly what they axed for this season.
We’re proud to partner with Halloween Horror Nights on our latest work of ART.
Put A Very Vicious Christmas in the bloody stockings of all your loved ones, whether they deserved diamonds or coal.”
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)”
The Christmas shopping gets suitably sinister, too, with a brand-new, limited-edition “Nightmare On The Ninth” merch drop accompanying A Very Vicious Christmas. Available now, the collection gives fans another reason to put something vicious on their Christmas list. Check out the brand new collection HERE.
The festivities have already claimed their first party guests. October 29 saw Ice Nine Kills take the album release beyond the music with a real-world activation titled ‘Road Kill’. Orchestrated by BOND, the stunt saw nine influencers and creators, selected for their existing Ice Nine Kills fandom, collected from the agency’s West Hollywood office for a surprise “one-way” trip to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood. Their transportation: a party bus sporting I9KILLS plates, with Art the Clown behind the wheel.
Onboard hospitality included blood-filled bottles, guts on ice, ominous safety instructions and a body bag that refused to stay still. The ride culminated in “Terror Tram starring Art the Clown,” where “Joy to the World” accompanied the creators’ encounter with the attraction and gave them an early taste of the release. Their reactions unfolded across social media and were captured in the below video. Art’s customer-service skills leave something to be desired. His commitment to carnage remains impeccable.
Watch the blood-soaked bus trip HERE.
Twenty years after the release of their debut album, Ice Nine Kills have spent 2026 collecting career milestones and making themselves increasingly difficult to escape across horror, music, gaming and cinema. “Twisting The Knife” featuring Mckenna Grace, heard over the closing credits of Scream 7, delivered the band’s first No. 1 at Active Rock Radio and on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, also topping the Hot Hard Rock Songs and Hard Rock Digital Song Sales charts.
The band’s relationship with Art the Clown had already produced a monster in “A Work of Art,” their official song from Terrifier 3 in 2024. Its music video debuted alongside the film in theaters nationwide, while the track had amassed nearly 60 million streams by August 2026, following a No. 3 debut and 18 weeks on Billboard’s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart.That bloody alliance entered gloriously gruesome new territory in 2026 through Ice Nine Kills’ collaboration with Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, with their reimagined Christmas classics featured on Hollywood’s “Terror Tram starring Art the Clown” and in the downtown clown area at the Orlando park. Those festive horrors now come home on A Very Vicious Christmas.
Elsewhere in 2026, INK continued their franchise killing spree with “Hell or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler Pt. 2)” from Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and “Play Dead,” created for Dead by Daylight’s tenth anniversary alongside an in-game Ice Nine Kills Collection.
October also saw Ice Nine Kills join forces with AMC Theatres and Bloody Disgusting for “Welcome to Horrorwood,” an AMC Thrills & Chills film series at approximately 300 locations nationwide. Bringing Hostel, Friday the 13th, American Psycho, Pet Sematary and The Crow back to the big screen, each screening paired a custom introduction from Spencer with the band’s corresponding film-inspired music video. Alongside their annual Silver Scream Convention and the Halloween Horror Nights collaboration, it made for an October in which INK’s lifelong horror obsession was writ large across cinema screens and Universal’s backlot alike.
Now, with A Very Vicious Christmas ready to soundtrack the decorating, gift wrapping and deeply uncomfortable family gatherings, Ice Nine Kills are coming for December. Hang the stockings. Sharpen the carving knives. Art’s coming to town and he knows if you’ve been naughty or nice.
ABOUT ICE NINE KILLS
Led by Spencer Charnas, the internationally acclaimed Ice Nine Kills blends extreme metal with melody, as evidenced by the densely catchy songs on their two breakthrough albums, The Silver Scream (featuring RIAA Gold single “A Grave Mistake”) and The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood. They have amassed more than 2 billion global streams and over 500 million YouTube views.
They were handpicked by Metallica for the M72 World Tour. The INKverse boasts a series of cinematic music videos, mock “true crime” books, graphic novels, “Nightmare on the 9th” merch drops and the annual Silver Scream Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, not far from the North Shore birthplace of Ice Nine Kills. The band closed 2025 with a headline performance at OVO Arena Wembley and the first Silver Scream Con London. 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Ice Nine Kills’ first album.
The horror community Spencer loves has embraced his band in return, with collaborations across some of the genre’s biggest franchises. For Halloween Horror Nights 2026, Ice Nine Kills created the music for “Terror Tram starring Art the Clown,” now collected on A Very Vicious Christmas. Terrifier 3, the highest-grossing unrated film, features “A Work of Art.” Scream 7, which had the biggest opening weekend in franchise history, boasts “Twisting The Knife (feat. Mckenna Grace).” “Hell or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler Pt. 2)” appears in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. In summer 2026, INK entered the world of survival horror game hit Dead by Daylight with “Play Dead,” while Spencer Charnas was invited to voice a character in the new Halloween: The Game.
In summer 2026, INK entered the world of survival horror game hit Dead by Daylight with “Play Dead,” and it was announced that Spencer had been invited to voice a character in the brand new ‘Halloween: The Game’ – another bloody step forward, foreshadowing INK’s most devilish surprises still to come.
Now, Ice Nine Kills close out the year in the most brutal of fashions with A Very Vicious Christmas, gleefully dismembering beloved holiday classics to give horror fans and metalheads a Christmas soundtrack to die for. They will be appearing as part of UNWRAPPED: An Acoustic Holiday. Six not so silent nights this December also featuring acoustic performances from Smith & Myers of Shinedown, Zakk Wylde of Black Label Society, The Funeral Portrait, The Warning, Ayron Jones, Sublime and more. For more information go to www.unwrappedlive.com
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