The application will include a NIN-centric theme, as well as over a dozen of the band’s songs from its last two albums. The partnership is among the first to bring licensed content to an iPhone application, and will likely prompt a wave of similar deals between other musicians and applications on the platform.

It's not surprising that Trent Reznor is at the cutting edge.

As with Wikipedia, users can edit this information, but not directly. All changes must be vetted by Amazon staff before appearing on the site, so you can forget about retroactively joining Run D.M.C. Rankings charts list the users with the most approved edits for the day, week or of all time, offering a bit of motivation to those want to amass that sort of authority.

Wikipedia is a snakepit of fan pages and official biographies masquerading as objective encyclopedia articles, but compared to some articles currently on SoundUnwound, Wikipedia is infallible.

SoundUnwound does put less emphasis on objectivity and verifiability guidelines, but in my opinion they have a little way to go if they want to overtake Wikipedia in the accuracy stakes. The first article I checked (Porcupine Tree), was woeful:

Sky Moves Sideways (1995) is considered to be Porcupine Tree’s seminal album, but the sound continued to evolve with Signify (1996), Stupid Dream (1999) and Lightbulb Sun (2000), becoming progressively rockier, a musical direction confirmed by the release of In Absentia (2002) and Deadwing (2005).

Moderating edits is a stroke of genius, but unless the moderation team is stacked with experts in every band ever formed they'll have trouble distinguishing between valuable, true information and, well, bollocks. That paragraph quoted above is clearly just the opinion of whoever wrote it, and contains a glaring mistake in the title of The Sky Moves Sideways.

People like myself who would usually just fix that kind of error might be put off by the requirement to register and have the changes go through a vetting process.

Then again, the lack of penis references in a website containing user-generated content is most refreshing.

The My Schizophrenic Brain project is incomprehensibly amazing work.

Check it out on his MySpace profile.

1. Part one
2. Part two
3. Part three
4. Part four
5. Part five

Great read.

Ink Complete specializes in very complex instrumental fusion metal by using uncommon time signatures, frequent changes of time signatures and melodies that follow no particular scale. For example, in the song "A Wild Hare", musical themes follow certain events of the Disney movie Bambi. What makes the song very uncommon is that the guitar (and sometimes bass) frequently play the notes of spoken dialogue in the movie, instead of using any of the original score. This makes the piece sound cacophonous, especially if the listener is unaware of the connection between the song and the movie.

Similar to the song "A Wild Hare" is "The Cereal Mouse", which uses a scene from Charlotte's Web (the original 1970s animated version) as its basis. Templeton's romp through the fair has always been my favourite sequence of the movie, and this song is an absolutely brilliant accompaniment.

And if you're interested, you can watch "A Wild Hare" here.

The DVD will be available in a double DVD set and a special five-disc collectors set with the two DVDs as well as three CDs containing the audio tracks from the DVDs, and expanded artwork.

The DVDs will also feature a huge amount of backstage and behind the scenes footage from the tour.

Somehow, in the three hours of footage present on the DVD, Portnoy managed to neglect every single show from their historic Australian tour earlier this year. It's still to be seen whether we rate a mention anywhere at all on the DVD - even the special features - but I'm not holding my breath.

The band, specifically Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, is not comfortable giving gaming companies access to the group's master recordings -- a necessary step in adding the band to any game.

Damn. I was looking forward to Guitar Hero: Led Zeppelin.

Mr Hunt said using the Lord's name in vain was a serious sin.

"When someone comes to the point of saying Jesus is the devil or Jesus is 'expletive', the Bible does say be very careful because you're on thin ice."

Evidently priests and the media are cunts too. People being arrested for what could be argued to be religious beliefs - solely because people of other, more prevalent religious beliefs disagree - is bullshit.

But where were these Bible-bashers 10 years ago when there were dozens of exactly the same (and much worse) Cradle of Filth shirts being proudly exhibited at E.V.'s Youth Centre in Croydon every Friday night?

Wherever they were, they should go back there and shut the fuck up.

I would love to know what sick bastard at Kellogs came up with this genius idea. I just spent the first three years of my sons life trying to get him not to eat blocks, and now you're telling him they taste like fucking strawberries. Thanks a lot assholes.

Apparently, Metallica's management held a listening party for UK-based bloggers and music journalists with rough mixes of some of their new material. When those bloggers and journalists wrote reviews of the music, they were forced to take them down by Metallica's management, even though they were never asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

"Once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites," they wrote. "Our response was 'WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record... that makes no sense to us!'"

The original story (and to a lesser extent the follow-up) was unfairly reported by most publications involved, especially Ars Technica. Metallica actually embrace the internet far more than most other bands of their size, with an entire website (LiveMetallica.com) devoted to digital downloads of each one of their concerts, in music-snob-pleasing FLAC lossless format. That didn't rate a mention in any stories about this most recent debacle, although the almost-10-year-old Napster lawsuit, which the band have distanced themselves from in recent years, did.

(Incredibly interesting sidenote: the title of this post refers to something my Dad said years ago when ripping into a Metallica fan who thought James Hetfield was a brilliant lyricist. My Dad contends that Hetfield merely sits in a room and tries to find new ways of rhyming with 'death'.)

Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away.

Not music related, but holy shit.

Point is: the band gets the geeks. So it's no surprise that they understand one of the easiest way to go viral on YouTube and across the Web is to make multiple references to videos gone viral before. Check out the band's latest video above, "Pork and Beans," and then below, embeds of all of the viral videos referenced.

Here's the video:

The band will debut their first single from the album when it hits radio in July and retail on August 23. Following the release of the band's album on September 13, they will then hit the road for an extensive tour in October.

When I first read the headline, I thought "hang on, didn't they just release an album?" It's hard to believe that Imago will be over two years old when this album comes out.

"The court agrees with the great weight of authority that section 106(3) is not violated unless the defendant has actually distributed an unauthorized copy of the work to a member of the public," wrote the judge in his order. "Merely making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work available to the public does not violate a copyright holder's exclusive right of distribution."

From the review of Ice Cube's The Predator:

Pro-Social Content
On "It Was a Good Day," Cube is thankful for a day without killing. He criticizes the indignities of prison ("First Day of School") and de facto segregation ("Integration").

Objectionable Content
Ice Cube threatens violence (including shootings, bombings and forced anal and oral sex) against targets including Los Angeles police chief Willie Williams ("Wicked"), former chief Daryl Gates ("We Had to Tear This Mothaf-a Up"), the jury that found L.A. police officers not guilty in the Rodney King beating ("Now I Gotta Wet 'Cha"), the officers themselves ("We Had to Tear This Motha-f-a Up"), the editor of Billboard magazine ("The Predator") and even the anti-gang Guardian Angels ("Dirty Mack").

Cube, formally of the rap group N.W.A., approves of looting ("We Had to Tear This Mothaf-a Up"), kidnapping prostitutes ("Say Hi to the Bad Guy"), and has no problem with sexual promiscuity that he describes in graphic terms ("Dirty Mack," "It Was a Good Day").

Summary Advisory
While it may be important to understand the anger of Ice Cube and his peers, this violent, near-paranoid attitude should be soundly rejected. A vile number-1 debut disc that should be put on ice . . . permanently!