The Nightmare Before Christmas may be about a terrifying Pumpkin King who lives in a realm filled with horrible creatures, but between its lovable characters and catchy musical numbers the iconic holiday classic doesn’t frighten us. It’s not exactly heavy on the scares, you know? But it would be absolutely horrifying if you changed the movie’s tone from kid-friendly to sincerely sinister, and one way to do that would be with this fantastic metal cover of Danny Eflman’s “This Is Halloween.” When played in a different genre, even those delightful songs can conjure up some true terror… and head-banging.

This song and video from Frog Leap Studios, which we first saw at Boing Boing, comes from Norwegian musician Leo Moracchioli. We’ve told you about some of his great metal covers before, like when he did The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and “Everything Is Awesome” from The LEGO Movie, but this might be his best yet. It feels like the perfect track for this style of music, creating a fitting homage to one of the movie’s best tracks. It also shows we need more devil puppets in music videos.

Maybe it’s because we’ve seen it so many times that we know the denizens of Halloween Town are mostly kind and wonderful, but we forgot how spooky this opening song really is for a movie meant for kids. But it’s clear even if they had changed the film’s tone from sweet to scary we would have loved it.

What other song from The Nightmare Before Christmas would you love to hear get a metal cover next?

Featured Image: Buena Vista Pictures