Category — Bands

While the newest installment in the Guitar Hero franchise will see a release just before Halloween on October 26th (Guitar Hero World Tour), another installment has just been announced.

“Guitar Hero: Metallica” will see a release sometime in 2009. This news comes via a teaser trailer included in Guitar Hero World Tour, which can be viewed online over at YouTube. The game will feature choice selections from Metallica’s entire discography.

There is no word yet on what kind of game controllers may be available with the game. Since the band are mainly endorsed by ESP Guitars, I wouldn’t be surprised if the controllers were made after their models. A few weeks ago we reported here that Metallica had sued Fernandes Guitars for putting a picture of bassist Robert Trujillo in an advertisement, because of conflicts with their ESP endorsement deal.

Since “Guitar Hero World Tour” will be released just before Halloween and features Metallica’s classic track “Master of Puppets” (among others)…a great idea for a Halloween party would be to pick up a copy and invite your friends over to play in their Halloween Costumes.

Source.

OK, so you might need to squint and look really carefully but the cover & tracklist for Guns N’ Roses, Best Buy exclusive “Chinese Democracy” is up at Best Buy.com.

11 of the 14 songs have either leaked or been played live before, leaving only 3 un-surfaced songs. According to Billboard…

“In typical dramatic fashion, the first noise one hears on the album is a blood-curdling Axl Rose scream, according to multiple sources who’ve heard it.”

There isn’t a full list of all the musicians who have played on the album yet. If there is a list included in the album’s liner notes it will no doubt be extensive. I wonder if the album will still have Buckethead’s custom Gibson guitar featured on it. I’m not buying this piece of trash album so someone will have to let me know.

“Chinese Democracy” Full Tracklist

01 “Chinese Democracy”
02 “Scraped”
03 “Shackler’s Revenge”
04 “Street Of Dreams”
05 “If The World”
06 “Better”
07 “This I Love”
08 “There Was A Time”
09 “Riad N’ The Bedovins”
10 “Sorry”
11 “I.R.S.”
12 “Catcher”
13 “Madagascar”
14 “Prostitute”

Image via Wikipedia

Much has been discussed concerning Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” album. The album’s pay-what-you-want model sparked lots of debate, discussion and intrigue in the record industry. The album was successful, but it’s pretty obvious that as far as a business model it wouldn’t work for a band not already very successful, famous and favored by the press.

In Rainbows ended up selling 3 million across all formats. It is worth noting that the band made more money on “In Rainbows” before its physical release than they did altogether on 2003’s “Hail To The Theif.”

“Radiohead’s publishing company, Warner Chapell recently revealed some information regarding the albums actual sales. According to Warner Chappell’s Jane Dyball, the band and its management tracked the amount fans were choosing to pay with the intention of canceling the download option if the price dropped too low. Warner also revealed that licensing the digital rights directly, and not through the standard collection agencies, was a key revenue generator.”

So, they still haven’t revealed the average download price, but it is interesting that they were tracking and monitoring the amount fans were paying.

Some more statistics regarding the “In Rainbows” release…
• After being made available for free for 3 months the album was no.1 in the UK and in the US
• 1st Radiohead album on iTunes – no.1 album selling 30,000 units in the US in the first week
• The physical CD has sold 1.75 million to date and is still top 200 UK & US
• They sold 100k boxsets via W.A.S.T.E.
• Nearing 17 million plays on last.fm
• 1.2 million fans will see the tour
• The digital income from the experiment made a material difference to WCM’s UK digital revenue this year

Source.

A while back The Cure were releasing singles leading up to their new album “4:13 Dream.” Some of these songs were good, but overall they didn’t seem to excite Cure fans as they should have.

Last weekend the band played a free show in Rome, Italy at the Piazza San Giovanni, this was professionally recorded by MTV and is now available on YouTube. Stereogum has embedded all the songs in the correct order for your viewing pleasure.

The new material is definitely more guitar-centric, but I like it a lot. The Cure’s last album, the self-titled 2004 release, was actually one of my favorites.

I liked its stripped down quality and these new songs retain that kind of feel. “Underneath The Stars” is as good as anything The Cure has written in years and “It’s Over” is almost prog-rock. I’m going to be interested in this record when it comes out.

Source.

A few weeks ago, I posted news about a Smashing Pumpkins DVD entitled “If All Goes Wrong.” The documentary/concert film will be released on November 11th and will contain footage of the band’s residences and the band leading up to reuniting.

“We went into the residencies hopeful to play some new music, with the idea I would write during the day and we could maybe even play new songs that same night,” Corgan comments. “What I didn’t anticipate is how much the process would inspire me, positively and negatively, to report what I was seeing and feeling from the shows. The documentary shows that process in an interesting way that reveals the link between the band and our audience.”

Entertainment Weekly, (of all places), has a preview of the DVD up at their website, in the form of “Starla” live. It looks as if Billy Corgan is playing a Gibson Les Paul in the footage.

The Tracklist is as follows…

Disc 1:

* “If All Goes Wrong” documentary
* “Voices Of The Ghost Children” featurette
* Interview with THE WHO guitarist Pete Townshend

Disc 2:

The Fillmore Residency*

01. The Rose March*
02. Peace + Love*
03. 99 Floors*
04. Superchrist
05. Lucky 13
06. Starla
07. Death From Above
08. The Crying Tree Of Mercury
09. Winterlong
10. Heavy Metal Machine
11. Untitled
12. No Surrender*
13. Gossamer*
14. Zeitgeist

Bonus Tracks: Live From The Floor Of The Fillmore

01. 99 Floors*
02. Peace + Love*
03. No Surrender*
04. Mama*
05. Promise Me*

*previously unreleased

Source.

There are many reasons indie-rockers love Obama. He wants to lower taxes, he supports music and art in schools and he is against the war. But he has more substance than just his stance on important issues. He is young, he’s fresh and people believe he can bring change in Washington. That’s why musicians from all over the country have been showing their support for the Illinois senator.

Bands who have stepped up to support the presidential candidate include The Breeders and The National who will play a show in New York City on October 16th. The following night, The Black Keys and Devo team up to bring their hometown an awesome Obama party in Akron, Ohio’s Civic Theatre. The night’s proceeds will benefit the Summit County Democrats.

The Beastie Boys are also planning their own mini-tour called Swing State Voter Awareness Tour which will be visiting cities in Virginia, Minnesota and Wisconsin. They will be bringing with them an assortement of interesting and entertaining characters such as Santogold and Tenacious D.

Dates for the Beastie Boys’ “Swing State Voter Awareness” tour:

10-28 Richmond, VA - Richmond Coliseum
11-01 Saint Paul, MN - Roy Wilkins Auditorium
11-02 Milwaukee, WI - U.S. Cellular Arena

Halloween is a pretty cool night to see a show, people are usually dressed up in costume and drinking a lot, this year will be especially cool because Halloween is on a Friday.

The only problem is what show should you go to? I just recently did a search on Ticketmaster.com for Halloween concerts happening in the LA area. There are a lot. There are some shows I was really surprised at. For example, Hoobastank, (remember them?), are playing at The Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, thats just kind of sad. From the top of the pop charts to a dinner club in suburban Agoura Hills. I guess the pay is good.

There is also Rise Against at the Hollywood Palladium. Indie 103.1 Horrorpops at the Anaheim House of Blues. Cypress Hill at The Wiltern, billed as “Haunted Hill” and even All-Star spook comedy at the Laugh Factory. There are too many concerts to list, so check it out for yourself. And if you don’t like any of them, have your own Halloween party and have your own band play it (if you have one).

Last week Shirley Manson, front-woman for the band Garbage, appeared on “Last Call With Carson Daly” to promote her role on the Fox TV show “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

When asked if her band Garbage would be doing another album together, she responded “I don’t know, to be honest. We’re sort of doing our different things.” “I’m doing the TV show, Butch is producing Green Day, so he’s busy, so we’ll see.”

This comment seemed to confirm previous rumors that the man behind the boards for Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and The Smashing Pumpkins “Siamese Dream” would be working on the follow-up to Green Day’s hugely successful “American Idiot” album.

At the time of the first round of rumors surrounding Green Day’s new album, the band’s management kept quiet. As for this rumor, the band’s label Reprise and their management declined requests to be interviewed. In 2006 a representative from Reprise Records confirmed that the band had begun work on new material at an undisclosed studio in the East Bay.

If you’re a Green Day fan, the fact that Butch Vig is producing the record is great news. His work on “Nevermind” and “Siamese Dream” is amazing and he is known for pushing bands pretty far to get their best performances.

Source.

Metallica is set to begin production rehearsals for their latest tour on Monday in San Francisco, the tour kicks off on October 21st in Arizona. According to drummer Lars Ulrich the band will play “a lot of new songs” from “Death Magnetic” on this tour.

The band has not toured the US for quite some time. When they’ve toured on new albums in the past they’ve been pretty conservative when playing new songs. Ulrich explains…

“These new songs are a lot of fun to play,” Ulrich tells Billboard.com. “Traditionally I think we’ve been a little conservative when we’ve started off with two songs, three songs (from the new album). We’re going to hit the ground running here. We’re probably gonna learn all of them and play, I hope, at least five a night and probably rotate ‘em so we get a lot of new songs in. That’s one thing I’m definite about.”

One of the reasons the band is so keen to play the new material is because its been heralded by fans and critics as a return to form. “Death Magnetic” has already sold almost 3 million copies worldwide and over 1 million in the US alone.

“It’s just an overwhelming, positive thing,”. “You couldn’t have told me a month ago or six months ago that we would have a record that would be this well-received. It seems like it’s so universal this time and it’s all over the world and everybody’s so into it on so many different levels — the fans, press, the peers … everybody.”

The band’s stage setup will be “in the round” once again but different from previous tours, involving a huge, moving lighting rig above the band.

I remember seeing footage of the band during the Black Album era and I believe they’ve been playing “in the round” since then. I recently checked out even older Metallica videos on YouTube and was surprised to see Kirk Hammett playing a lot of Ibanez guitars. Regardless of what guitars they’re playing this time around, its the first time I’ve personally wanted to see a Metallica concert in a long while because I think some of the new material is great.

Source.

Coldplay’s Chris Martin has written a letter to the band’s fans (via their website) to offer up some info regarding new releases. It isn’t a new album but Coldplay fans will be excited, maybe…

The band is gearing up to release an EP called “Prospekt’s March” and it contains 5 songs that didn’t make it onto the band’s latest album “Viva La Vida.” Before the EP is released Chris Martin has also revealed that “In a few weeks we are going to release a version of Lost! which has a guest experience on it in the form of JAY-Z.”

This is why I said that Coldplay fans would “maybe” be excited, I think the Jay-Z collaborations will probably get mixed feelings but either way, if you’re a fan you’ve got a few new things to look out for. The tracklist for “Prospekt’s March” is as follows…

1. Life In Technicolor ii (which is a song)
2. Postcards From Far Away
3. Glass Of Water
4. Rainy Day
5. Prospekt’s March

Chris Martin continues, “We are very proud of these and are pretty excited to release them. They have been the subject of many discussions and arguments; some might be considered too catchy or too heavy for Coldplay songs but in our minds they complete the VIVA LA VIDA picture.”

If you’d like to read Chris Martin’s full letter head over to Stereogum, where they have transcribed the original letter posted to Coldplay’s website.