With Stone Sour Getting Ready For a New Album, All Eyes On Slipknot

As Stone Sour, the Grammy-nominated Alt-Metal band, prepares to release a new album, Audio Secrecy on September 7th, Stone Sour and Slipknot front man Corey Taylor sat down for an interview with Billboard.com to talk about the new album, and unsurprisingly, the future of Slipknot was brought into question as well.

The new album, and the single Mission Statement, have been drawing buzz, following so closely after the death of Slipknot’s #2, bassist Paul Gray. With Taylor working on these kind of projects and having at least a moderate amount of success (when compared with Slipknot), one has to ask if the death of one of the founding members of Slipknot may result in the breakup of the band as each member goes their separate ways to pursue their own side projects.

While Taylor remained mute on the future of Slipknot, he does seem optimistic about the future of Stone Sour, calling Audio Secrecy “the most well-rounded and diverse album I’ve ever been able to make.” and fans seem to agree, with the single Mission Statement seeing an estimated 50,000 downloads in just under 48-hours when it was made availible for free on the band’s website.

As for the future of both bands, only time will tell.

Halo:Reach to Include Orbital Dogfighting

While most of the big spoilers for Halo: Reach were revealed back in May via the Multiplayer Beta, Bungie still had a few cards up their sleeves for E3 2010; the biggest of which being space combat.

While the Beta brought the new class system (and jetpacks) to the table, this newest form of combat brings a whole new dimension to Halo, allowing players to strap into a ship, blast off, and take the fight right to the invading Covenant army, blasting their ships out of space, miles above Halo’s familiar FPS territory.

Granted, no game ever looks quite as great as it’s E3 trailer, but if this turns out to be half of what it looks like, Halo: Reach is shaping up to be the best and most original game of the series.

Halo: Reach is set to hit stores September 14th, 2010.

Michael Jackson: The Game

This afternoon, video game publisher Ubisoft announced a new, highly anticipated video game for the 2010 holiday season. You might think it involves a certain pair of sibling plumbers, space marines, or sword-wielding elf, but you’d be wrong. Instead, the game features…The King of Pop?

Despite the creation of “Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker” for the Sega Genesis (hey, it was the 80’s…), this game seems incredibly strange. Granted, rather than a side-scrolling adventure game where you kill thugs by throwing your hat and forcing them into choreographed dance routines, the game will be in a “Rock Band” meets “Dance Dance Revolution” style setup where players will be able to re-enact some of MJ’s most famous performances in a game that will “immortalize” his music.

Still, I have to ask, why?

I know that he was a major part in shaping pop music throughout the 1980’s-1990’s, but still, is this game really something that will showcase good music and entertain a younger generation of gamers that haven’t been acquainted with his music, or is this Ubisoft’s attempt to cash in on the King of Pop and all the DVDs and albums being sold since his death?

Personally, I thought Micheal Jackson made some decent music, but I never considered myself a fan, so maybe I just don’t see the appeal of this kind of game. All the same, much like the “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” franchises, I expect to see this milked for all it’s worth, selling copies based solely on the name of the game and not the content.

The game will be available holiday season 2010 on the Xbox 360 (using Kinect), PS3 (using Playstation Move), Wii, Nintendo DS (a handheld?), and Playstation Portable (???).

New, Sleek Xbox 360 Revealed at E3; Expect in Stores This Week

After being outed yesterday by an Italian advertiser, it was finally revealed at the E3 Expo today that the dark and angular 360, is 100% real. It goes on sale today, becoming available at retailers later this week, for only $299, while the original 360 and the 360 Elite will soon see a $50 price drop after having production discontinued.

Among some of the upgrades from it’s predecessors includes built-in 802.11n wi-fi, new fan design for a quieter system, a new 45nm chipset, 5 USB ports, a special ‘Kinect’ port (previously known as Project Natal, MS’ attempt to copy the EyeToy a decade late), the power supply is now internal, and it comes with a 250GB removable hard drive (though sadly, the hard drive is not the same as old hard drives, so no swapping them out).

According to Engadget, all earlier models of the 360 have now been discontinued, only staying on shelves until stock runs out, after which time, we’re stuck with the younger, darker cousin of the 360 we’ve grown to love. Assuming it gets through the first few weeks without any major issues, I don’t think anyone will mind though.

Welcome to MetalNerd

Starting from the remnants of Pyrosummit.com, MetalNerd is the collaboration of several metalhead friends with nothing better to do than discuss music, video games, and general geekdom.

We have big plans for the site, so stay tuned. In the meantime, feel free to argue about what constitutes real metal, the best metagame deck for MTG, or the best feats in D&D 3.5