I’m not a big fan of television game shows, especially those that air during prime time. However, there are times where I could be easliy swayed into watching them. Say if there were a theme to the night, like a special pop-culture edition of 1 Vs. 100 or as the case was this past Monday night, a special Star Wars themed Deal Or No Deal.

I’m a huge Star Wars fan and generally have to check out something with the Lucas stamp even though he’s pimped out his product to pretty much anything and everything for the better part of 30 years. Regardless, in an effort to say I saw it, I made it a point to watch at least part of DOND. (more…)

A long list of influential bands have been reuniting for tours and festivals over the last couple years. There are two bands rejoining this year which changed my life only the way music can: THE VERVE and MY BLOODY VALENTINE. Last night, Richard Ashcroft, Nick McCabe, Simon Jones and Pete Salisbury took the stage as The Verve for the second time in two nights at the Madison Square Garden Theatre in NYC. I heard and read online they sounded fantastic at Coachella this past weekend and every word-of-mouth bit or rumor was absolutely true. Richard’s voice is still incredible; Nick’s guitar craft is like none other I’ve ever heard and the grooves Simon and Pete create round out a perfect recipe for blissed-out Brit rock. (more…)

Our sister metal social networking site BITPOM is giving away an autographed Michael Amott Signature LTD “Ninja” guitar to celebrate Arch Enemy’s upcoming “Tyrants and Bloodshred” tour.

Head over to BITPOM.com now for a chance to win!

You would think after two weekend shows in Brooklyn and Hoboken, that British rock band SOUTH wouldn’t be able to fill the Mercury Lounge, but last night they did. Fans bobbed their head along with the band’s melodic songs, yelled at the band to play the old songs, and listened attentively to the new ones.

The new songs don’t stray much from their past records, but do sound a bit more grown up and thought out. You can check one here, in their video for “Better Things”:

ALABAMA 3, have kicked around the music scene since the late 90’s. Their origins are clouded in mystery, it’s original members claimed to have met in rehab. This makes sense since their music has been dubed a sweet mixture of acid house country blues music or “chemical country”.

The band, known to many here in the states as “that band that did the theme song to the tv show, The Sopranos” is known for their amazing live shows with the band singing and preaching country jams with southern accents set to live rave-up music.

The band’s longtime label One Little Indian thought it would be fitting to celebrate their existance for the last decade by putting together a retrospective of the band called Hits And Exit Wounds. The retrospective gives a great overview of the band and shows they have more rounds in the chamber than a song that served as the theme for Jersey mobsters.

Check out their send-up of the man in black.
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MP3: Alabama 3 :: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”
BUY: Alabama 3 :: Hits And Exit Wounds

One of our favorite bands to space out to, 120 DAYS, played a late show last night at The Mercury Lounge in NYC. The Norwegian quartet has not released any new material since their 2006 self-titled album on Vice. A full crowd were given a taste of what’s to come next as every song was new except for their stand out single, “Come Out, Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone”. We’re super excited for their sophomore release which to our knowledge does not have a release date yet.

Here’s a video from last night we found on You Tube from Kerouac:

The first month (4 official weeks) is just about over. That’s 1/6 of the season. It’s still early, yes, but it’s starting to get a little competitive around here. Just a little. The gap tightened this week on the big board, check it out: (more…)

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE recently cut a live recording session for daytrotter.com. That in and of itself is pretty awesome but if you take into consideration the band debuted 2 new tracks from their forthcoming album Narrow Stairs, well then you got yourself some icing on the proverbial rock cake.

Check out the DCFC daytrotter sessions here.

A few weeks ago AGAINST ME! announced they were going to have their song “Stop” used for an upcoming Rock The Vote promotional PSA. Then still shots appeared of the band performing with things burning in the background. Now it’s all come together and we got ourselves a PSA and people wanting us to vote.

We’ve returned from Worcester with tons of pictures and videos for you from the first-ever Metal Summit and New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. We’re proud to say that Metal Summit was a huge success! A packed room of metal fans and industry had a great time learning and exchanging ideas. As for the fest itself, well - with the huge list of amazing bands playing, did you really think it would be anything less than stellar?

Tons of huge bands, tons of great people - but why sit here and tell you about it when you can find out first-hand from all the BITPOMers in attendance. Head over to www.bitpom.com for photos, videos, and fan reactions to all the events!

We joined forces with our friends at Seagate/Maxtor, Universal Records and AbsolutePunk.net to launch an exclusive contest leading up to this weekend’s Bamboozle Festival! Check it out and enter to win. The contest runs through Saturday morning, May 3.

Also - Seagate just announced they are the first hard drive manufacturer worldwide to have shipped 1 billion hard drives! Imagine this: the 1 billion hard drives equates to approximately 79 million terabytes, able to store 158 billion hours of digital video or 1.2 trillion hours of your favorite music.

Friday we got an advance of the new OLD 97’s album, Blame It On Gravity and being longtime fans of the band, we were super-eager to tear through and disect the band’s first set of new tunes in 4 years.

As if that wasn’t enough, later that night, Rhett, Murray, Ken and Philip ended up on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno performing a new song “Dance With Me”. It was almost too much Old 97’s greatness to absorb.

DOWNLOAD: 3 songs from Blame It On Gravity at Amazon.
PRE-ORDER: Blame It On Gravity | Blame It On Gravity: Deluxe Edition

Blame It On Gravity tracklisting and tour dates can be seen after the jump. (more…)