Nate Lanxon

Two weeks ago, Metallica released Death Magnetic — their best work since 1991’s Black Album or 1986’s Master Of Puppets. But I can barely bring myself to listen to it.The band has taken the ‘loudness war’ to such an extreme that Death Magnetic has been crippled by cataclysmic distortion, as a result of the insane volume the album has been cranked up to.Except, if you listen to the Guitar Hero version, it sounds fine. What the hell!? Read my full rant at CNET UK. 

Should Facebook or Microsoft acquire the page impressions and users of Twitter and FriendFeed, Google would be justified in wondering if it missed the boat.My full post at CNET UK. 

I’ve been researching and working on something for over three months for CNET. It’s the most epic story I’ve ever written. And it’s now finished. I can’t wait for you all to see it.

This just in from Corpse:

Hey every​body,​ Alex from Canni​bal here check​ing in from Mana Studi​os in St. Peter​sburg​ Flori​da.​ Paul has finis​hed all the drums​ track​s for our new album​,​ and we think​ he did an amazi​ng job. Thing​s reall​y went smoot​hly with the drum track​ing this time,​ and that gave us a littl​e extra​ time for Paul to get creat​ive with some of the drum parts​.​ Every​thing​ is still​ fast and bruta​l as you’​d expec​t,​ but there​ are a few diffe​rent rhyth​mic ideas​ happe​ning that we think​ our fans will appre​ciate​.

The next step for us will be to start​ worki​ng on a guita​r sound​,​ and then begin​ guita​r track​ing.​ The sound​ of the rhyth​m guita​r is one of the most impor​tant thing​s on a metal​ album​,​ so we will take our time and make sure that we get the heavi​est sound​ possi​ble.​ The recor​ding of the rhyth​m guita​rs will be somet​hing we’​ll take our time with as well.​ Rob, Pat and produ​cer Erik Rutan​ are truly​ perfe​ction​ists when it comes​ to guita​r track​ing,​ they’​ll settl​e for nothi​ng less than a flawl​ess perfo​rmanc​e.​ That kind of dedic​ation​ can make for a chall​engin​g recor​ding sessi​on,​ but when the end resul​t is a crush​ingly​ heavy​ album​ it’s more than worth​ the time and effor​t.

Article here.

Many people have asked why they can’t subscribe to an RSS feed for my editorial blog on CNET. Well now you can. I’ve got a membership at PonyFish and it dynamically creates RSS feeds from any site. It simply looks at the site and monitors variables in the URLs that appear within it, adding links within an RSS feed to items that have been added.

And it works.

You can subscribe here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NateLanxonCNETUK

Maybe add a link on your blog as well? A thousand thank yous will be sent via first class mail.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

As we predicted earlier this month, UK music download store 7digital has announced it has secured Sony BMG as the fourth and final major record label to give the site its catalogue in the MP3 format in the UK.

As of today, 7digital is the first store in Europe to offer a completely DRM-free catalogue from all the major labels, including the entire MP3 catalogues of Metallica, Bob Dylan and Queen, and is planning on expanding its offerings into North America in the last quarter of this year.

In addition, Sony BMG has allowed all previous purchases of its DRMed catalogue to be re-downloaded free of charge.

Full story on CNET here.

Hot in my inbox this morning was a press release from Warner Music Group, announcing that Warner’s music catalogue will be available in MP3 format from Tesco’s music download store, Tesco Digital, which I wrote about back in April of this year.

My full article on CNET.

Apparently it may surprise a small number of people to know this, but simply owning an iPhone does not automatically make you friends with someone else who owns an iPhone.

I was on the train from the office the other night, reading the Web on my iPhone. Sat across from me was a girl, also using an iPhone. She noticed and raised her iPhone to show me that she, too, had an iPhone, and smiled at me accordingly.

Mostly, that’s fine. People on trains habitually look miserable during their journey, and smiling at someone is always nice. However, her reason for smiling at me was purely because we both had iPhones — a ‘meeting of minds’ over N95s, BlackBerry Curves or Sony Ericssons would not have caused this moment of atypical kinship.

Now, if you’re a one-legged albino midget, and you bump into another one-legged albino midget on a train, that’s a reason to strike up a conversation (especially as you’ve probably both fallen over). Simply owning an iPhone is not. Continue reading…

Read the rest here!

Fun, we sometimes has it.