Armchair Diplomat

Metallica's latest concert DVD offering

People have called Metallica a lot of things over the years. Some of them have been complimentary and some of them have been less so*. But something they’ve never really been called is prolific. The band has been around for nearly 30 years and more than half of their studio albums were release in the first 10 years of their career.

Which makes this an interesting time for the band. They’re still touring their latest album and they’ve already released two new live DVDs. It’s the latest one, Orgullo, Pasion y Gloria – Tres Noches en La Cuidad de Mexico, that’s the subject of this review.

The DVD documents the band’s three-night run of shows in Mexico City in June 2009. Multiple versions are available – the two disc version includes video of every single track the band played over all three shows, and the list of songs that got left out is probably not much longer than the list of ones they included. You can also get the DVD with or without audio CDs of the gig, and it comes in Bluray too if you’re that way inclined. I’m reviewing the standard single-disc DVD edition though.

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You see what I did there?

Freddie would be excited, if you know he wasn't dead...and there wasn't a girl next to him.

Just released today,  you can now download some Queen content to Rock Band!

Included amongst the new tracks are:

• ‘I Want It All’
• ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’
• ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’
• ‘Another One Bites The Dust’

All of them cost 160 Microsoft rapedollars points each, 1280 for the ‘Pack’ of songs. Don’t get me started on Microsoft Points. I know we’ve all been burned.

Anyway! I can imagine some of the tracks have good guitar bits in them, but I don’t know whether that would be enough for the hardcore RB guitarist.  The singing opportunities however should be awesome.

Even reading about Jack Russells, he's awesome

I’ve always been a great admirer of Matt Berry, ever since I saw my first episode of The Mighty Boosh. His bizarre sense of humour combined with his rich, expressive voice are a winning combination for the screen. But of the many projects I’ve enjoyed him in, I’d never have realised one of them would be a music album.

I bought Matt Berry’s Opium on one of the many recommendations Amazon seems to assault you with every time you log in to have a browse around. On this occasion, having logged on to see if Season 3 of The IT Crowd had been released on DVD yet, Opium was sitting on my list of recommendations.

Having seen Snuff Box (and loved every wierd-arse moment of it), I knew Berry was a composer and singer, but didn’t know he’d made an album. I love the theme to Snuff Box, it’s a mind worm of a song. You can be sitting anywhere and break out humming it. And while I’m loathe to validate Amazon’s many attempts at cross-promoting, it sounded far too cool not to buy. So about a week and half later (importing, eh?) it arrived and I’ve been listening to it this week.

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GH: Aerosmith it ain't

Either you like their music or you don’t. That’s kind of the theme of this game. If you like Metallica, then you’re guaranteed a solidly built game that will probably constantly get dragged out for a bit an afternoon thrash. If you don’t like Metallica, but enjoy Guitar Hero, then this game is great fun for super fast licks and chunky, heavy chord progressions. If you don’t like Metallica, or Guitar Hero, well I’m not sure why you’re even looking at this page. Seriously, why? A friend put you up to it? What a jerk. You should tumble dry all their cotton t-shirts.

I love Metallica, one of the more favourable byproducts of growing up with a metal-head brother. And you have to admire (if nothing else) the band’s knowledge of their fans. This game is built for Metallica fans. Need proof? Check the track listing:

• Total number of Metallica songs: 28
• Songs from questionably received albums released after “Load“: About 5 or so

This game is for the fans of classic Metallica tunes, Black Album and earlier pretty much. The selection is fantastic. They probably couldn’t release a Best Of collection that does as much justice to their earlier work. Read more

Metaphorically, of course

As it turns out, only a day after complaining about how long it was taking online, Rock Band 2 arrived in my mailbox today. I haven’t had a solid chance to give it a spin yet (I have a previous engagement at a Mexican restraunt to get quite drunk tonight), I’ll be sure to give you my impressions soon.

Mark also promises to get in on the action.

For now all I can tell you is that the game runs fine on an Australian system, and Xbox Live has no problems recognising the disc. My original Rock Band tracks exported just fine (after the 400MP licencing fee), no problems there. So if any of you fine Australians were wondering if it was a feasable option or not, I can say it is.

My only real problem now lies in the fact that Guitar Hero: Metallica is due for pick-up tomorrow. And while I’m at the games shop I’ll probably end up buying something else (pays to be efficient, you know!) to try out. But it looks like it’ll be a stint of music games for the next little while.

Oh well, what are days off work for? I just hope Infinite Undiscovery gets my apology note for having consistently put it aside.

As a long time fan of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band franchises, I dutifully pre-ordered my copy of Guitar Hero: Metallica yesterday so I can be playing it as soon as possible. I love Metallica’s music, so I’m looking forward to what the demo presented as quite a compitent addition to the Guitar Hero series. Rock Band: The Beatles is also slated for release this year, and I’ll probably grab that too. Adding to the already published RB: AC/DC Live and GH: Aerosmith, it’s obvious that publishers have found a new, cheap and easy way of expanding their music titles (even though some may argue that the quality of a music release is often in it’s range of different musical tastes).

Band tie-in games are obviously an untapped gold mine for developers, and to prove my point, I give to you 8 band branded music games that I’m sure we’d all like to see: Read more