Category — Albums

Last month, there was a huge news story about a blogger being arrested for leaking songs from Guns N’ Roses forthcoming “Chinese Democracy” album. This story was ridiculous in many ways, namely the fact that the FBI was involved in the arrest of the blogger and that the blogger also faces the possibility of many years in jail. This was looked at as extremely heavy-handed and very anti-fan, on the part of Guns N’ Roses. Apparently though, the Blogger’s arrest has now resulted in even more downloading of the leaked “Chinese Democracy” songs than ever before.

Website TechDirt.com has an interesting piece on this…

“Bob Lefsetz does a quick email back-and-forth with Eric Garland of BigChampagne, the company that tracks file sharing activity. Garland points out that prior to the arrest, there was almost no file sharing of the album, despite the fact that the leak happened a while back. However, since the arrest, the numbers have shot way up, as the arrest has really only served to alert the public that the album is available for download on BitTorrent.”

Now what they’re implying here is that this may have all been an elaborate viral marketing campaign perpetrated by the band and their management. This actually does make perfect sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the FBI is involved or why a fan/illegal downloader could go to jail for years. And you thought this whole “Chinese Democracy” fiasco couldn’t get more ridiculous.

Metallica just played two of England’s biggest rock festivals, Reading and Leeds. A live soundboard version of their new single “The Day That Never Comes” from Leeds is available online via YouTube. The band’s “MetClub” series lets fans download soundboard versions of live shows for a fee, this one apparently leaked to youtube.

The sound of the song is a little muddier than the studio version, but overall it’s decent. From what I’ve seen it appears James Hetfield has been playing a lot of Gibson Explorers and also Les Pauls recently. I personally like the way these sound a lot more than the ESP’s he plays a lot. The structure of the song is kind of dangerously close to the band’s classic track “One” but its probably better than most of the tracks currently on Modern Rock radio.

The “new” Guns N’ Roses single “Shackler’s Revenge” leaked just recently. It is to be included in Rock Band 2 and will mark the bands first official release of a song since 1999 (when “Oh My God” was released on a soundtrack that I can’t remember).

The song was posted as a YouTube video of bloopers, which was down but is now back up. The song, (I’m not sure why the title is related to pirates…), in my honest opinion is laughably bad. As some others have noted, it does indeed sound like Axl Rose just discovered Gravity Kills, or some other horrible Nine Inch Nails rip-off band from 1995 and replicated their sound on this track.

It is pretty apparent that Axl Rose is a psycho and this whole “Chinese Democracy” debacle has gone way too far. I’m still just waiting for someone to say it’s all a big joke, so far that hasn’t happened yet.

Billboard.com has reported that the Jared Leto-fronted modern rock band 30 Seconds To Mars is being sued for $30 million dollars by Virgin Records.

“Virgin is suing the band for alleged breach of contract and damages “in excess of $30,000,000″, according to paperwork filed Friday (Aug. 15) in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Virgin accuses Jared and Shannon Leto of not delivering three of the five albums under the band’s contract, which it entered into in 1999 with Immortal Records. Virgin took over the contract in 2004, according to the suit, which adds that the Letos “repudiated” the 1999 contract “and claimed that they were excused from such performance from and after July 4, 2008, pursuant to California Labor Code Sec. 2855(a). The law governs the ability of entertainers to terminate their contracts after seven years.”

The band has responded via internet postings by Leto. It looks as if they intend to fight the lawsuit.

“So, as you may have heard we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000. Insane? Yea that’s what we said too.” Leto makes various claims in his posting, stating that the band were unhappy that they had sold two million albums yet were “still $1.4 million in debt” and that the “next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt.”

It is interesting to see how this will play out, it seems to be the old major label swindle. Though, it is very possible for the band to walk away unharmed as I have heard about other artists safely ending their contract after 7 years in the state of California. For more info…

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The Cure have been releasing singles/b-sides leading up to their forthcoming album, set to be released October 13th.

The two newest songs that debuted this Wednesday (August 13th), are both classic Cure. “The Perfect Boy” is pretty poppy but in a good Cure way and actually features sitar. The b-side “Without You” is equally as good, its a little more relaxed sounding, with an easy strumming guitar and Robert Smith’s traditional vocal approach.

There’s really nothing new in the style of these new Cure songs, but the songwriting is great and I guess thats all that really matters. I think fans can probably expect a great new album to be released by the band this October. Follow the source link to listen…

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It’s hard to believe that Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails have been around for 20 years. Though the “band” is mainly Trent Reznor (at least on record), it’s still amazing he’s been going strong for such a long time.

Billboard.com has a great retrospective piece titled “20 Years of Nine Inch Nails” that details each important phase of Trent Reznor/NIN’s career. The piece covers everything from Trent Reznor getting his first job working in a studio to the release of his newest album “The Slip” and everything in between. Of particular interest is the period between “The Downward Spiral” and “The Fragile” when Reznor was starting to develop a serious drug problem.

“On July 1, NIN cancelled its London Arena show, purportedly because of the drummer’s stomach flu. Years later, Reznor would reveal the real reason: He had overdosed on heroin, one particular drug he had always denied doing. The tour ended the following week, and Reznor disappeared for five years.”

For any NIN fans, this retrospective is well-worth checking out and also features a NIN Chart History, NIN Essential Videos and NIN Essential Recordings list.

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It has been announced that Radiohead will be scoring Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s movie adaptation of his new book “Choke”.

“Palahniuk explained it all came from his love of the band’s music, saying: “Clark Gregg, who directed the movie version of Choke which comes out on September 26 (in the US), he knew that I’d written Choke while listening to Radiohead’s Pablo Honey, with Creep, over and over and over.”

Not only did Radiohead contribute a song to the final credits at the end of the film, but they decided that they would score the entire film, with ambient pieces throughout. Palahniuk is known for including alternative music in film adaptations of his books, such as when he included The Pixies “Where Is My Mind?” at the end of Fight Club.

This seems like a good thing for the film itself and Radiohead fans, although I haven’t seen the film yet, so I cannot comment on it, or whether it is as good as Fight Club or even in the same vein. I’m also guessing most of the bands score work will feature a lot of guitar effects, particularly because it has been mentioned as ambient sounding.

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Metallica have announced a North American run of tour dates with support along the way coming from The Sword, Down, Machine Head and Lamb Of God.

Members of the bands fan club will get access to tickets first before they go on sale to the general public. The band’s new record “Death Magnetic” will be released on September 12th and the first single from the album “The Day That Never Comes” will be released to radio later this month.

Full Tour Dates:

All October/November dates with Down and The Sword :

October 21 - Glendale, AZ Jobing Arena
October 23 - Albquerque, NM Tingley Coliseum
October 25 - Kansas City, MO Sprint Center
October 26 - Des Moines, IA Wells Fargo Arena
November 1 - Portland, OR Rose Quarter
November 3 - Salt Lake City, UT Energy Solutions Arena
November 4 - Denver, CO Pepsi Center
November 6 - Omaha, NE Qwest Center
November 8 - Moline, IL iWireless Center
November 9 - Columbus, OH Schottenstein Center
November 17 - St. Louis, MO Scottrade Center
November 18 - Tulsa, OK BOK Center
November 20 - Houston, TX Toyota Center
November 22 - Little Rock, AR Alltel Arena
November 23 - New Orleans, LA New Orleans Arena

All December dates with Lamb of God and The Sword:

December 1 - Seattle, WA Key Arena
December 2 - Vancouver, BC GM Place
December 4 - Calgary, AB Pengrowth Saddledome
December 7 - Edmonton, AB Rexall Place
December 12 - Ontario, CA Citizens Bank Arena
December 13 - Fresno, CA Save Mart Center
December 15 - San Diego, CA Cox Arena
December 17 - Los Angeles, CA The Forum
December 20 - Oakland, CA Oracle Arena

All January dates with Machine Head and The Sword:

January 12 - Milwaukee, WI Bradley Center
January 13 - Detroit, MI Joe Louis Arena
January 15 - Washington, DC Verizon Center
January 17 - Philadelphia, PA Wachovia Center
January 18 - Boston, MA TD Banknorth Center
January 26 - Chicago, IL Allstate Arena
January 29 - Uniondale, NY Nassau Coliseum
January 31 - Newark, NJ Prudential Center

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Metallica has set September 12th, a Friday, as the release date for their new album “Death Magnetic”. This is unusual as traditional release days are Monday/Tuesday for albums.

The band’s last album “St. Anger” also saw a Friday release, reasons cited for this are that it prevents leaks. How true that is, im not so sure.

The band  has also filmed a video for the first single from their new record, entitled “The Day That Never Comes” with director Thomas Vinterberg.

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Dischord Records is set to release a compilation of tracks by the band Faraquet. If you don’t know of the band they were around from 1997 until 2001, they preceded Medications and featured Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter as well.

The band was known for angular guitar parts and strong hooks, and have been described by some reviewers as a cross between Fugazi and King Crimson.

The compilation entitled “Anthology 1997-98″ is available exclusively through Dischord Records online in CD, LP and MP3 formats and will be available everywhere else on July 28th. Working on the compilation re-established an interest in the band and they have reunited.

I strongly recommend checking out this band if you haven’t yet.

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