This album is much better than their previous ‘Manipulator’. It simply flows from one track to another and musically they returned to the style that made them who they are. Equal parts screamo and melodic, quick, breaks downs, change ups and harmonics. It’s hard to believe they are a three piece at times, but it’s a sign they are honing their craft and pushing themselves to make better music this time around. The production on the album is solid all of the way through, the mix is very warm and balanced. All in all, I am very impressed by the album as a whole.

Score4 / 5

Favorite tracks:

• Straight-Jacket Keelhauled
• Battleship Graveyard
• Single
• Dirty Pillow Talk

HtB’s new album is much like their previous nintendo-core, midi-heavy experiments. This one does show a bit more effort into the song writing element. Where not every song is noticeably inter-changeable with one another, they even do slower tracks with stronger song structure as well. They still do their spastic songs quite well, and they do them in a way that never really gets old from album to album. If you’re a fan of HtB they don’t disappoint. Being one who will occasionally break out the Horse the Band albums and have a listen, this album will fall nicely into the collection, and receive the same status as well. The production value of the album is somewhat questionable at times, the mix gets better as the album goes on, it’s either that or I just got used to hearing the toms dominate over everything else in the mix. (over compression? or maybe the engineer couldn’t find the volume fader, either way they should slap him for his tom use)

Score 3 / 5

Favorite tracks:

• The Failure of All Things
• Between the Trees
• Arrive

On this album Time Lambesis’ (Vocalist for As I Lay Dying) side project Austrian Death Machine deliver’s exactly what you’d expect from them. For those unfamiliar with their first full-length or even their christmas single, imagine a generic metalcore style of music with interludes of someone doing an Arnold impersonation. Don’t get me wrong, if you are looking for something heavy on breakdowns and fast solos this is it. The original songs by the band are alright, certainly nothing to complain about, but the real gems on Double Brutal come in the bonus cover cd, which pulls from sources that helped shape the metalcore scene today. Its nice to hear some of the songs redone with a more thrash attitude and a faster tempo. The album comes and goes very quickly, it’s going not down in history or move any mountains, but it is a fun listen, the first few times.

Score: 3 / 5

Favorite Tracks

• It’s Simple, If It Jiggles It’s Fat
• Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good(originally by Iron Maiden)
• Tactically Dangerous

Muse’s new album “The Resistance” literally picks up where “Blackholes and Revelations” left off. The opening track feels very formulaic to the band’s style. From here it moves into what they do best, something that feels the same yet distinctively progresses their sound beyond what you expected. Then the track, “Undisclosed Desires” moves the album in an electronic direction and transitions to the Queen-like epic song, “The United States of Eurasia.” Flawlessly blending genres and soundscapes as Muse does so well. Whether a crescendo to a middle-eastern riff, or a building verse, or a brief breather, before you’re handed the quickest and most up beat song on the album “Unnatural Selection”, (for this track think “Stockholm Syndrome”,with a slow bridge in the middle). After this the album rolls on in the fashion of pulling from unique sources for a fresh approach to the same music other bands have attempted. The last three tracks close the album as a symphony in 3 parts, giving the album the grand closure it deserves.
After several listens to this album I am still discovering new pieces to be excited about. I find myself enjoying more each time I listen to it. The sound, pacing, and production make the album feel complete. The talent of Muse cannot be argued, they are a three piece consistently outdoing themselves in both sound and scope, is impressive to say the least.
My favorite Tracks

• Undisclosed Desires
• United States of Eurasia
• Unnatural Selection
• (Though the album is best listened to whole)

SCORE 4.5/5

Managers Conference Inside report day 1

An inside friend at the Gamestop Managers conference 2009 has sent me an email with a load of information regarding the gaming industries hot and heavy titles and a quick coverage of everything they have experienced thus far.

HALO 3 ODST

Bungies long-awaited shooter was available for play, and for any Halo fan they will not be dissapointed, for anyone looking to see the series be revitalized and explode into a new frontier for the Halo genre, they will be. It’s a touched up Halo 3. The Firefight mode, sporting an impressive four player coop showed off a large amount of new weapons unnamed to us, and a great amount of cool units. Brutes with jet packs jumping obstacles, the shield runners moving in a Phalanx formation, and the snipers were DEADLY accurate, the game definitely requires more skill to hold up against the covenant waves then its predecessor.

Over-all I give the game an 8 from the experience, the visuals were good, gameplay flowed

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
All you marvel kids hold onto your hats, the game looks better than the first iteration of the series, and the character list is fantastic, the playable demo allowed control of Storm, Spider-man, The Human Torch, and the Cap, provided you pick the “rebellious side”, leading you to then battle and unlock a re-tooled dead-pool. If you pick the side of the pro-enlistment group you are given Iron Man, The Hulk, The Thing, and Wolverine. I assume the sides twist and writhe as you progress the story, and the twists take effect. SPOILER ALERT!! Upon further questioning of the Activision staff, tho the game is based upon and follows the civil war comic series, Captain America does not surrender as he does in the series, and he will not be killed. The only answers beyond that we could get is, “You will not see this ending coming.”

Marvel’s preview rating 7.5 for gameplay, and an 8 for story.

Forza Motor Sports 3

A great simulation racer for anyone who wants to drive the cars they’ll never own at incredible speeds through gorgeous scenery. The game looked and felt great. The one button driving for idiots like me made it super simple to just dive into the game and tear up the tracks. I also really liked the rewind feature, where simply pressing the back button will rewind to a check point about 15 yards back so that you can retake a turn you messed up, or avoid an accident you may have caused. And with stronger car customization support. This game will definitely out do Forza 2 by leaps and bounds.

Rating 9

Split Second

I don’t do racers, I dont even pretend to understand cars, and damn this game caught my eye. The HUD is all on the back of the car, your drift time, speed, gear, all cleanly integrated into the vehicle. The world is very well designed and looked gorgeous, and to keep the destruction junkies like myself interested you earn power plays. When you trigger the events, literally changing the entire track, whether you destroy the airports control tower, bring a plane crashing into the track, or roll a semi across the lanes to clear out the other racers, this game brings what I felt was the next step for Burnout-style destruction racing.
Reserving this game at GameStop will get you a limited edition die-cast car, and the code to download it in game when it releases.

Preview rating for Split Second 8.5

Modnation Racing

PS3 owners if you haven’t read up on this, do it! Fully customizeable worlds in the spirit of LBP, make your character look how you want, make your kart look how you want, unlock new items, pieces, clothing weapons by winning races. And in the loving theme of the play/create/share gaming an amazingly fluid track creator. Everything renders instantly in HD, you control lighting effects, path interruptions, ramps, weapons drops (mario kart much?). This game will be a must have for any gamer, the kart racing element was hilarious and the multiplayer aspects were genius.

The PSP Go

The system is sleek, shiny and launching October first with Gran Turismo five right on its heels, a good buy for any digital media focused gamer. The usual concerns come up with no UMD slot being present, and Sony did not comment on any plans to make the UMDs you may already own rippable. The 16 gig built in memory, and the expandable pro duo micro slot makes it a great value for those of us who hate carrying game carts/discs around.

COOL facts you may not have known
The PSP Go can sync with almost every blu-tooth device making your ps3 wireless headset a useable gaming piece for your go. Also most games will be developed in support of the DualShock 3 controller, which can also sync with your psp-go to control the games. The video output will still be built in so you can use your PSP Component cables to connect your go to your tv, sync your DualShock 3 and play PSP on your tv, not a bad deal at all. It will still support all other PSP features, and be sold along side the current PSP 3000.

Gran Turismo PSP

39.99 800 cars, 35 tracks, solid graphics great racing. This is a great psp title available October 1st.

Ghost Busters for the PSP
on NOV 3, 2009 the game will launch for PSP, AND, all other versions of Ghost Busters will see a price drop to coincide with the launch.

DJ HERO
was fanastic, rhythm game enthusiasts will love it, and enthusiasts of DJing will find it to be a fantastic translation of their art into a game. great mixes and a huge lineup of 100 songs. Buy this game

It will retail for 39.99 and ship very soon this holiday season, the graphics are re touched, and the game looks fantastic!!  Both redone games for 40 bucks? Hells yeah.

More info to come as the week rages on! Comment with any questions and I’ll get answers as fast as possible.

Digg founder, Kevin Rose and Nine Inch Nails figurehead Trent Reznor sat down recently and answered questions submitted (and voted for) by fans for the fourth ever Digg Dialogue. Year Zero television series is topic of discussion and is described as “a dramatic unraveling of the end of the world.” Reznor will oversee the project at an executive producer, most likely with NIN art director, Rob Sheridan. The rest of the dialogue is fantastic, as Reznor is a selfproclaimed geek, you can check the whole thing out here.

In April 2007 Nine Inch Nails released the overtly political concept album Year Zero. An extensive ARG to help listeners become part of the Orwellian 2022 United States the album was about preceeded and followed it’s release; a world where the US drugged the water and kidnapped anyone considered seditious or unpatriotic. In various interviews, NIN figurehead, Trent Reznor hinted his interest in adapting the album’s story into a coherent narrative, possibly in the form of a graphic novel, but most likely as a HBO television maxi-series. Over the past two years the project had been the hot topic among rabid fans, with Reznor mentioning it’s snail paced developement. It seems that fans can start chomping at the bit for real now. According to two cryptic updates on Reznor’s Twitter the Year Zero series is a go.

Here’s one that I saw awhile back, for those who haven’t seen it make sure you can hear the musical excellence:

It seems that Tony Award winning director Julie Taymor has developed a Broadway version of everyone’s favorite webslinger. According to an e-mail received from The Spider-Man Movie Network containing this link, Bono and the Edge of U2 are composing the music and lyrics to said feature. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will open February 18th at the Hilton Theater in 2010.

It was announced about a month ago that Nine Inch Nails had planned on recording a performance from this most recent tour in 3D. Sadly the ball was dropped on the project due to lack of support from a former label and the project fell through. Rather than letting the incredible stage production wrap up with no archived footage short of an official trailer and a shitload of unprofessional video footage, three shows were filmed by crew in high definition…

This is where it gets interesting:

Trent Reznor has released over 400 gigabytes of raw hi-def concert footage from those three performances free via BitTorrent for fans to download, edit and share.

This should prove to be quite a fun exercise in editing if you are at all interested in that kind of stuff.

Download the footage:

• Victoria, BC (12.05.08)
• Portland, OR (12.07.08)
• Sacramento, CA (12.12.08)