"Everybody's Home For The Holidays" with The Burning Hell

The Burning Hell are one of the hardest touring bands there is. When not touring as the band, Mathias and Ariel often tour their duo records. This year they released “Never Work”, a series of work songs reimagined for the gig economy, roping in Alexa as a robot drummer. The plan had been to tour working men's clubs with the record, but, other than a few shows within the Atlantic Canadian bubble, it was not to be.

What they did do, however. was invent their own Cable Access Television show Everything Will Probably Be OK over three parts, including features on tea-towels, imaginary winter gardening, and every twitcher’s favourite quiz show “What’s That Bird”. They also released a split single called “I Want To Drink In A Bar” with B.A. Johnston.

“Everybody’s Home For The Holidays” is quite possibly the first Christmas single to channel both Tom Lehrer and George Formby while discussing dining table awkwardness and COVID holidays. It's also the first appearance of a pots and pans solo on Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada. The racist boyfriend of “The Winter Away” also makes an unwelcome return, and this time he’s got some thoughts on QAnon.

When we asked him to follow up his last contribution to Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada (2015’s "The Winter Away"), we didn’t know it would spark a whole album of holiday adjacent song-smithery, including Hannukah hits, a song celebrating Venice’s “Marriage of the Sea” holiday, Buñol Spain’s La Tomatina holiday and a heartfelt wish that every Black Friday should be a Black Metal Friday. The self-admittedly silly album, Mathias Kom’s Holy Hullabaloo is available in full PWYC via The Burning Hell's Bandcamp.

The band will be performing live on YouTube on 17 December to mark the last night of Hannukah at 8pm GMT.