Mastodon Selected as Zune’s April Ignition Artist

Grammy-nominated metal band Mastodon have been named Microsoft’s Zune Ignition artist for the month of April. As part of the Ignition program, Mastodon will release a series of exclusive features on Zune Marketplace, Zune.net, MSN and Xbox LIVE surrounding the release of their latest album Crack The Skye. The exclusive features include an album download with exclusive track”Divinations (Live)” starting March 31, an editorial track-by-track “Breakdown” of the album by the band (available April 7), a playlist curated by the band (April 14), free track “Divinations (album version)” on April 21, and a free video on April 28. In addition, Xbox and MSN have a “Crack The Skye” webisode available for streaming.

Download the exclusive Mastadon media here.

Crack The Skye, which was was released March 24 2009 on Reprise Records, is Mastodon’s fourth studio album, and has already received critical acclaim. The album entered the Billboard Top 200 Charts at #11 and sold 41, 395 copies in its first week.

Mastodon are Bill Kelliher (guitars), Brann Dailor (drums, vocals, percussion), Brent Hinds (lead guitar, vocals, and banjo) andTroy Sanders (bass, vocals, and bass synth). The band formed in Atlanta in 2000 and has been recording and touring since.Mastodon is currently on tour throughout the US, and will begin a European tour in June.

Check out Mastodon’s profile on the Zune Social here:

DILLINGER, AUSTRALIA, NINE INCH NAILS, NEW SHIRTS, MANIAC MANSION, BILLY DIES IF HE EATS
Current mood:Bottle Rocket
Category: Music

Hey everyone, a little update.

We just got back from Australia, and even though the flight/layover/flight/layover/flight(and that’s just one way!!) combination is enough to make you lose your mind forever, I gotta tell everyone in Australia, and everyone reading wherever you are, that we have never, or at least speaking for myself, I have never had more fun on a tour. We have never been on tour with so many friends at one time, and the combination of that fact, with amazing weather, unbelievable shows, and ridiculous random adventures made it two straight weeks of pure FACE(refer to a few blogs back if you don’t know what I’m talking about). We had ourselves, Poison The Well, Everytime I Die, NIN, and other random peeps like Unearth and Underoath and The Bloodhound Gang, just tons of people we’re friendly with, just acting a fool and causing a ruckus pretty much nonstop.

Two weeks. Total insanity. Bridge climbing, scuba diving, riding bikes across little islands populated with weird creatures, swimming in the Indian ocean, getting yelled at by hotel managers for jumping off of roofs into the pool, leaving a trail of absolute carnage across Australia on and offstage. We’ve got some good stuff on video between us and ETID that we’re gonna combine into a little joint video blog for everyone in the next few days, and if we don’t have it on video Keith from ETID and I are gonna try to fill in the blanks with some written tales. All that stuff’ll come up in a few days. For now though, to tide you over, I wanna put you up on a few things you should definitely check out.

First of all, in case you hadn’t heard, Ben and I guested with Nine Inch Nails on their song “Wish”, in Adelaide, and you can check out the high definition video Rob from the Nails camp shot right the fuck HERE. If you can’t load that, HERE’S the same footage but in YouTube format.The next show, in Perth, Nails let us ALL come up and do the song again. There’s no HD up yet from that show, but here’s some CROWD FOOTAGE to whet your appetite. Thanks to NIN for letting us join forces with them for what probably looked like more people than there are in Earth Wind and Fire having a musical gay pride rally onstage.

Oh yeah, Billy Rymer kills it on the drum kit but apparently is allergic to 95% of the edible substances on the planet so he threw up/passed out/almost died about seven times during our trip. I don’t know whether that’s morbidly hilarious or horrifying or a bit of both but if this kid dies from a peanut or some mustard or what have you I’ll be a full believer in the DEP curse and never get onstage again.

Speaking of Billy I’m not sure how much of a proper introduction everyone’s had to him, but yeah this Billy kid brings a weird anxiety to our playing that we haven’t had in some time, really plays on top of the beat if that means anything to you music geeks, and its making our shows feel completely propelled by spastic destructive energy like they haven’t been in a while. A lot of people who’ve been around us a long time are saying this is the best we’ve been in years, which is crazy to hear but you’ll see for yourself if you haven’t yet. Billy boy’s getting ready to move in with Ben and they’re gonna do nothing but drink large amounts of caffeine and rip out the insanity from morning to night. There’s never really been a Dillinger house, its always been people getting to the practice space from different locations, writing in bedrooms, etc. Now we’re gonna do that whole live and breathe the new album thing from morning to night to try to create the ultimate DEP record or kill one another trying, we’ll post snippets of demos or some vids now and then to keep you all on your toes. We’re gonna paint all the walls black and have strobes on while we write and keep random deadly live animals in the house and set Spy VS Spy style traps for one another and shoot bottle rockets at each other inside and probably end up dead but you guys’ll have a killer record at the end of it all. It’s pretty much gonna be like that house in the Tom Hanks movie “The Burbs” mixed with Maniac Mansion except way weirder and waaaayyyy louder.

Back to limited shirts. Everything has gone out, you might not have Dead As History yet because they literally JUST went out, but you should be getting them within the next few days depending on where you live. Any questions about any other shirt or address change shit, go to our message board and check out the merch thread and all questions will be answered. We’ve gotten ten or so returns for people we can’t get in touch with, so we’re gonna post a list of names of that handful of people in that thread, so if you see your name get in touch with the thread boss guy and we’ll get you sorted out along with a signed CD. What shirts do we have left? We’ve done Bubblegum, Fix Yer Face, Dead As History, 82588
Red and Green, Particle, Milk Lizard, Party Smasher, and Horse Hunter. So we’ve got Lurch, Sick On Sunday, Wave, Nong Eye, and Mouth Of Ghosts left. Lets get this shit moving so we can be done by the time the new record comes out! We’re gonna throw everyone a bone since this shit’s been taking so long on our end, and we know the economy’s been sucking it pretty hard lately and pretty soon we’re gonna be using seashells for money. Here’s the next two shirts, Lurch and Sick On Sunday, together for the price of one. We’re gonna keep them up until March 15th. Ten days. That’s a pretty big window. If you miss out its your own damn fault. Check ‘em out here then cruise back to the main page to pick ‘em up. We’re also gonna be making these on softer thinner more fitted shirts from now on, like the Party Smasher design if you got that one, in an effort to keep the quality of these shirts higher than ones you get elsewhere, so you can look as devastatingly handsome/delicious as possible when you’re wearing them, so that people who don’t even know who we are will stop you and say “Hey man where can I get that shirt?” and you can say “Suck it loser you can’t.”. Anyhow, you get the picture. Here they are, Lurch and Sick On Sunday, for ten days only, for the price of one. You’re welcome.

Alright that’s enough for now I don’t want you all to explode.

Oh yeah! One more thing. Ben’s signed up for a Dillinger Twitter account, so since I talk at everyone on here he can fill you in on the day to day with the Twitter thing. It’s hooked up to our main page so you can check it out there, or if you wanna have Ben’s little updates sent to your phone, go to the front page and click on whatever you need to click on to figure it out, and you can get little updates from Ben W. himself while you’re doing anything.

Enjoy the videos and the new threads, thanks Australia, thanks to NIN and ETID/PTW/every other band we were rolling with on a daily basis, we’ll get the video blog up within a few days.

Love…..The Dillinger Escape Plan

The videos represent tracks from the debut album, Coup. Each video was intentionally filmed in a live, non show setting at Swinghouse Studios in Los Angeles. According to front man, Ilan Rubin, “Rather than miming to a meaningless video treatment, I chose to utilize the video to highlight what a band should do best: play live.”

The New Regime video premieres on imeem are scheduled follows:

March 10: “Order Restored”

March 13: “Take Control”

March 17: “The Collapse”

March 20: “Tap Dancing In a Minefield”

March 24: “This War Time”

March 27: “Haunt My Mind”

Touted as a “true solo project,” The New Regime consists solely of 20 year-old Ilan Rubin, drummer of Nine Inch Nails and previously Lostprophets. No mere time-keeper, adept multi-instrumentalist, Rubin, wrote and recorded every note of bass, drums, guitar, piano, and vocals on The New Regime’s 2008 debut, Coup. Playing in bands since the age of 9, Ilan has made his way into the Guinness Book of World Records for opening Woodstock ‘99 with his first band at age 11. The last three years alone has seen Ilan playing with Lostprophets on sold out tours and festivals all over the world, such as, Download, Reading/Leeds, Rock am Ring/Park, Fuji Rock, Summer Sonic, V Festival and more. Ilan joined Lostprophets at the age of 17 playing drums on part of their third #1 album, Liberation Transmission. While writing the latest Lostprophets album and sporadically touring with the band, Ilan began toying with the idea of The New Regime. After recording 10 eclectic tracks in his garage, The New Regime’s debut album Coup was released in November 2008.

Keeping to his DIY ethos, Rubin decided to put Coup out as a digital album and will be releasing it on his own without a label. “I didn’t want to wait around and get too many people involved in this project. I had a specific vision and felt I could carry this out by myself with my management.” While digital retailing lends itself to individual track downloading, Rubin insists that Coup is eclectic and is still a traditional album. “I feel all the songs on the album are strong on their own but I think that listening to the album as a whole is a completely different experience,” explains Ilan.