New album ‘Skying’ is out through XL Recordings on the 11th of July, but fans of the band have been kept at ease with the release of single ‘Still life’ earlier this week.

The bands debut in 2007 marked a strange resurgence of ‘goth’ culture from these arty creeps, however in 2009 their Mercury Music Prize winning album ‘Primary Colours’ showed them going into more experimental territories of Brit-rock past, now they appear to have regressed even further into an 80’s haze. Some will love it, others will hate it, but there’s no denying The Horrors are back and sticking to their guns.

You can check out the single ‘Still Life’ on Youtube or below.

Sad news just in that former Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore passed away today in his hotel room in Spain.

Moore will be best remembered for his work alongside Scott Gorham on Lizzy’s ‘Black Rose’ album, bt also found continuing solo success with chart topping hits ‘Out In The Fields’, ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’ and ‘Parisienne Walkways’ throughout the 80s. He continued to tour and gained great respect for his earthy blues sound.

Police sat there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Moore’s death, Downtuned would like to extend our deepest condolences to Moore’s family and fans.

We all like to rock the fuck out in the privacy of our bedrooms, right? Perfect your Bruce Dickenson hand movements, Van Halen guitar histrionics and Bonham tubthumperisms . And you’ll look like a bit of a spod while doing it too. Admit it, if someone walked in on you you’d  try to pass it off as a nervous tick.

But never fear. Thanks to Red Bull (best served with copious amounts of vodka) you can turn you bedroom antics into fame and fortune. And not in the Paris Hilton way. You will however need a band and some kind of musical talent though.

Red Bull Bedroom Jam is a…err…thing that allows bands to upload their performance to their site and let the internet, the harsh bitch that she is, judge their talents.

The winners get fame, fortune, girls, blow and will most likely end up with severe substance abuse problems, playing dive bars for pocket change. Which sounds pretty amazing to me.

So, if you’re in a band, or just enjoy arbitrarily downvoting any band that feature members with ‘haircuts’  head on over to the site and take part.

Remember Handsome Dan from Wayne’s World? (He was the ‘freak with a microphone’)

He had a cool voice.

But this guy has the coolest voice.

He may be homeless but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have quite possibly the greatest announcer voice I’ve ever heard. I could listen to him all day and be quite happy. Hell, give him the shipping forecast. I don’t care, i just want him saying stuff. Any stuff. Really. I’ve watched the video five times because I enjoy it so much.

In some pretty cool news, it looks like this video is going viral, and The Voice has been offered paying work. Go Team Internet!

Judging by this latest video from Seattle sound stalwarts Soundgarden (for new top choon ‘Black Rain’) it seems the Downtuned staff aren’t the only ones wasting time watching Metalocalypse all day. Featuring something of a return to their ‘Badmotorfinger’ sound and heavier Sabbathy roots, this isn’t bad at all, but it remains to be seen if the reformed band can compete in the modern market – whaddaya think?

If my roommate did this, I would probably kill them.  I hope he gets his albums back.

And no-one turns into something…inhuman.

What sucks? MOVIE REMAKES!

What rules? NICK CAVE!

So, finding out that 18 foot tall Australian master of jangly post goth awesome is penning a new version of The Crow is somewhat confusing. On the one hand, do we really need another version of The Crow? Alright, it’s a decent enough movie, but then it did spawn the horrible habit of lanky, spotty, goth boys dressing in duct tape every halloween. And remakes are genetically predisposed to be horrible bags of toss.

But then, Nick Cave is writing it. And Nick Cave is known for not sucking at anything. The Proposition was a pretty cool movie. Both his books do that dirty southern gothic thing with the subtly that few can manage.  And all his music projects have ruled.

The combination of Cave and Crow  would also cause a goth critical mass that would suck anyone wearing an ankh into a very, very black hole. Which would be funny.

A while ago we reported on the fact that someone had created a Roillins / Danzig slash fiction comic imagining a world where the two icons of awesome lived together as very special friends. Rollins saw it and thought it was funny. Thanks to Decibel magazine, Danzig has seen it too.

Well, kinda. He knows it exists but didn’t want to see it.

And in a quite brilliant turn of events, the dude who created the comic in the first place turned Danzig’s reaction into another comic.  Read the whole thing here.

An Iron Maiden video that doesn’t suck?!

Amazing!

Occasionally I get sent mail from bands who want me to review their stuff, or embed their video or say nice things about them for some reason. I don’t often do it because on the whole, they are depressingly boring.

But yesterday I got an email that contained this…

We made the video ourselves and it’s basically a battle between a robot and a wizard (homemade costumes). In the video there are fireballs, russian roulette, sword fights, massages, a dog with a cape, breakfast etc…..

It’s actually pretty badass!

And I knew I was onto a winner. I love the fact that they follow ‘a dog with a cape, breakfast’ with ‘etc’ – Yeah, that’s right you know, dogs with capes, early morning meals, the usual, you can sort of guess what’s next… Brilliant.

This came from a genuinely delightful indie pop band Hotel St. George

I checked out the video. It did indeed include all the aforementioned stuff and defiantly rates as ‘badass’ The video reminds me of staying up til 3AM watching videos on MTV2 to try and find something new to impress my friends with.

Which is good.

OK, so he didn’t quite say it. But it was pretty close. This is Fran Nevrkla of the PPL (a record industry group) talking at their AGM.

Thank you, David, and thank you for putting some of those pirates behind bars. I know that regrettably capital punishment was abolished in this country some 50 years ago, sad it is, but a few years in jail is probably pretty OK…

I’m off to torrent something I don’t really want just to piss this guy off.

News is trickling in that a body found by police may be that of former Stereophonics man Stuart Cable.

Cable, 40, left the multi-platinum beige-rockers in 2003 and has been happily hosting BBC Radio Wales’ rock show ever since, he had often said that he had ‘no regrets’ about leaving the band. Emergency services reached Mr.Cable’s house near Aberdare at around 5 am on Monday morning -police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.

Cable’s new band Killing for Company were scheduled to play Donington Park’s Download festiva this Saturday and have a new album scheduled for release this summer.

More on this story as we get it.

UPDATE: Cable has indeed passed away, cause of death is believed to have been excessive alcohol consumption which lead to heart failure. DT would like to offer our condolences to his family and friends.

Sad news just in tonight that legendary metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio has passed away after losing his ongoing battle with stomach cancer at the age of 67.

His wife and long time manager Wendy left a message on Dio’s official website for fans today:

Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever.

- Wendy Dio

Although his Dungeons & Dragons imagery and diminutive stature occasionally led to ridicule, Dio was widely regarded as a true professional by fellow musicians. From humble beginnings playing trumpet and bass guitar in the late 50’s and 60’s his distinctive vocals helped define the sound of late 70’s heavy rock during stints in Rainbow and as Ozzy Osbourne’s replacement in Black Sabbath – he had recently reformed with members of Sabbath and was intending to tour under the ‘Heaven & Hell’ moniker – and he is widely credited for popularising the distinctive ‘devil’s horn’s’ salute familiar to rockers worldwide.
Ronnie also fronted his own band and became America’s number one touring act during the mid-80’s, and despite wavering fortunes continued to tour consistantly to the last.

On a personal note, we here at DT would like to extend our sympathies to Ronnie’s family. Having crossed paths with the man on several occasions over the years, he was a dedicated and genuinely pleasant individual who created some of the most singular and influential music in metal and his presence will be keenly missed by friends and fans alike.

“Henry and Glenn are very good ‘friends.’ They are also ‘room mates.’ Daryl and John live next door. They are satanists.”

Danzig And Rollins sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

If ever there was a more mind boggling music based comic than one featuring a romace between Glen Danzig and Henry Rollins – please point it out in the comments.

Rollins is amused by this. Danzig, well – I guess he hasn’t seen it yet.

You can buy it here. If you want. I’m not sure.

(yes I’m going to buy it.)

I think the title sums things up. I’m quite excited to see this, because Rush are awesome and anyone who says otherwise should be banished to the outer reaches of the Solar Federation, where the Snow Dog will take a piss on their shoes.

Reports that Type O Negative and Carnivore frontman Pete Steele died on April 14, 2010 from heart failure. He was 48.

Carnivore were crossover pioneers with a do-not-fuck-with-us attitude and a sense of sardonic humour. Type O were, well completely unique. So far beyond gothic cliché they went all the way round and ended up appealing to everyone.

Everything dies.

One day I’m going to get sick of funny metal covers. Until then, you’re going to have to bare with me. Sorry.

First Slipknot and now this. I would drop some serious money on an album of this.

So, you’re a billion-selling rock behemoth that needs to make your dinosaur-grooves relevant to a new generation – have you considered getting the geek overlord over at rainwarrior.com to programme your biggest hit to work on a NES?

Hey, remember when music magazines meant something? When they were important and relevant? Before the internet came along and soundly kicked the crap out of them, showing them up as the stilted, outdated, bloated relics they really are? Yeah? Fun wasn’t it?  Journalists were almost as important as the rock stars themselves – reviews echoing in your mind as much as the last gig you went to.

Now you have embittered bloggers like me spouting vitriol on a thousand cookie cutter blogs, each trying to outdo each other on spite and bile levels. – Which, to be honest is still fun, but doesn’t quite have the same romance.

But fear not! For the Gods of the internet themselves – Google – have put every single issue of seminal American indie magazine SPIN online so you can relive those days when a single 100 word review could crush the dreams and careers of hopeful alt. rockers. Go have a read.

For music nerds there is nothing more satisfying than grouping bands together based of their collective genres. For design nerds there is nothing more satisfying than complex data being shown in a novel and user friendly way. These two nerd sub sets collide on this – the Rock ‘N’ Roll Metro Map.

See a massive version here!

Nerdcore – the geeky offshoot of rap and hiphop, more concerned with witches and trolls than bitches and hoes – where the size of your RAM is far more important than the size of your gun has thus far been a very American institution. But things change.

Thanks to a man named  Milk Plus and the homeless of London (yes, really) The UK now has a Nerdcore scene to call it’s own.

Who is behind the UK revolution? Matt Catlow is a music production trainer for a large homeless charity by day…. and nerd rapper “Milk-Plus” by night. (Milk-Plus being a reference to the fictional drink in the book/film ‘A Clockwork Orange’) Through his work with the homeless he works in a fully equipped recording studio in Covent Garden, London providing music production training and recording opportunities for homeless clients. A lot of the service users are rappers and most of them rap about the streets and the negativity inherent in gang culture. Nerdcore offers geeksta as an alternative to gangsta rap and because of the aforementioned wide lyrical playing field rappers can find something positive to rap about and still fit right in.

So, UK nerdcore now has a home, and a de facto leader. The tenth anniversary of the word Nerdcore (as coined by MC Frontalot) is coming up and now is the time for British nerdcore to rise up and get elevated. Go here and join in the fun

Every time a story emerges about Prince, it seems almost impossible not to feel a bit of hatred towards the annoying midget singer. Yes he might have graced the world with a few catchy pop songs, but Christ is he a complaining prick who spits his dummy out all the time when things don’t quite go his way. Boo hoo indeed Mr. Prince. Do you want us to get you some crayons so you can go squiggle another stupid symbol across your head?

Just like a teenager, Prince went through his rebellious stage when he was a middle aged man. Slightly angry that his record company were supposedly shafting him, the Purple Rain star decided to replace his name with a symbol. Did anyone care? No, at best the majority hoped ink poisoning would kick in.

If it wasn’t enough for Prince to be all upset about symbols and names, he later focussed his anger on digital music. Launching a personal crusade against file sharers, he strongly opposes the medium of musical distribution for free but has now gone one step further. Try visiting Youtube and searching for any releases by him. It’s difficult to listen to studio tracks from him underneath DIY fan videos. Why? Because Prince thinks it’s damaging his musical earnings. Or something like that.

And what’s next on the hit list of the musical superstar? Poor defenceless toddlers, that’s who! Annoyed by the fact that a young child was getting some sort of amusement and joy out of his track “Let’s Go Crazy”, the child’s mother Stephanie Lenz who filmed the clip, was sued for supposed copyright theft.

Of course, it might not be Prince himself directly barking out orders to remove these quite likely poor quality clips featuring a dancing child. Still, there is still a strong chance as he sits in a mansion plotting evil things where everything is lined with velvet and the heads of bootleggers on pikes.

Thankfully, commonsense prevailed and a Californian judge pretty much told Universal Records to piss off and stop wasting his and everybody else’s time. However, this does mean in theory that it’s possible to do dances to our favourite artists and not get in to trouble. We’re going to start by squeezing in to a leotard and prance around like Beyonce. Hell yeah.

There are times when you’ll be sat at work, the godawful strains of commercial radio filling yor ears with bilge, when you may find yourself wishing that current popular music took more notes from the classics. Obviously Endless Noise feel the same way, conjuring up this fantastic motown version of Beyonce’s Single Ladies – makes us wish beehives were back in fashion.

Lucian Grainge – new CEO of Universal said

I believe that the CD will out-survive me as a format

Everyone under 40 facepalms. Very hard. Bye Universal.

Apparently the Devil has all the best tunes, although that apparently doesn’t stop Pope Benedict XVI from rocking out on occasion –at least according to The Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, which has leapt head first into the murky waters of internetsville by publishing a list of his top ten albums. In no particular order of blessedness:

1. Revolver – The Beatles

2. If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby

3. The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd

4. Rumours – Fleetwood Mac

5. The Nightfly – Donald Fagen

6. Thriller – Michael Jackson

7. Graceland – Paul Simon

8. Achtung Baby – U2

9. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory – Oasis

10. Supernatural – Santana

Apparently the list is designed as a users guide to those spiritual types who want to attend the odd festival this Summer, although the real surprise is..it’s not that bad a list. Oasis are shit obviously, and Santana lost any cool points the second he came across Ricky Martin’s phone number, but otherwise it seems the afterlife has a pretty decent jukebox, balanced out by the presence of an acid tripping lesbian dallier, and an album revolving almost entirely around the dead rising from the grave.

Rock on your holiness.