On March 2, with their new album titled Invaders Must Die. What’s better than a new album from The Prodigy is that this album will once again feature the original lineup including Liam Howlett (The Prodigy), Keith Flint and Maxim Reality.

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned—the 2004 album that saw Howlett teaming up with the likes of Juliet Lewis and Twista—nothing can compare to their earlier albums. I won’t lie or try to flaunt any sort of cred, The Fat of the Land was my first and remains my favorite Prodigy album. mmmmm… My mind is awash with memories of high school.

Anyway, new album by The Prodigy titled Invaders Must Die, hits the streets on March 2. The tracklisting includes:

1. Invaders Must Die
2. Omen
3. Thunder
4. Colours
5. Take Me To The Hospital
6. Warrior’s Dance
7. Run With The Wolves
8. Omen Reprise
9. World’s On Fire
10. Piranha
11. Stand Up

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Once again, I will invoke the visual wizardry that emanates from Andrew Jones to spice up my drab corner of the internet. Trust me, I’m not a stalker, I simply admire the work that he does. I aspire to be as great at what I do as he is at what he does. First off is some album art Andrew did for the upcoming Soulfly album entitled Conquer coming out July 29th on Roadrunner Records.

This is just a snippet, so head over to the Concept Art Forum to see all of it’s glory. This artwork is just pretty enough to make me buy this album. I have Soulfly’s second album Primitive, and I like it a lot, but I haven’t gone out of my way to check out anything they’ve done since then. This’ll be a good excuse to jump back on the band wagon.

The second little bit of Jonesiness I wanted to throw out to the world is this video of Jones demonstrating a new vector art application called Alchemy. In it he combines the power of his tablet and sound to create random shapes which he then throws together to develop a little concept art. It’s a pretty cool demo. I’ve downloaded the beta version of Alchemy myself and will give a brief report after I play around with it for a while.

That’s right, Trent Reznor has done it again. I got an email in my inbox this morning announcing the release of yet another Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip. Like Ghosts I-IV before it, The Slip is available as a free download in a variety of high quality audio formats. According to the NIN website there will also hardcopies available for sale in the near future. Unlike Ghosts, The Slip is a more traditional NIN album—read: the inclusion of angst ridden lyrics. So, if you dug With Teeth and Year Zero then this will be right up your alley. I haven’t had a chance to hear the entire album yet, but my initial impressions are positive—big surprise there. I will probably have more to say in this regard once I’ve had a chance to listen to it a couple of times.

Get your copy now… here.

A band that I have been spinning pretty heavily this week is Crystal Castles, and their new self titled album. This Toronto based duo produces catchy chiptune electronica straight out of your favorite NES cartridge. The mastermind behind this project is Ethan Kath who uses modded keyboards to recreate the lo-tech blips that make the Nintendo generation feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Add to that the squelching vocals of Ms. Alice Glass and you get an enticing palette of aural experimentations. The album runs a pretty wide gamut of tempos, which is pretty well illustrated in the first two tracks.

Untrust Us—While heavily layered the track is relatively light. Overall, Untrust Us flows smoothly and sounds like it’s pumping you up for a major boss battle, which would be track two…

Alice Practice—The polar opposite of track one, hard edged and aggressive with bomb-blast bass lines. This track features Glass, and she tears it up with her shrill vocals. This track is reminds me the most of Hanin Elias’ work with ATR, or the Swedish group 64Revolt. A side-note, if you are trying to show a guy who’s into shoegazer(?) music how awesome Crystal Castles are, then this is not the right track for him.

This is a continuation of Monday’s post regarding the new NIne Inch Nails release Ghosts I-IV. I finally got around to ordering the album by 8p.m. Monday evening which is right around the time that the site went down. I managed to place my order and after getting my confirmation email and download link I selected my file format and when I hit download… Nothing, just a “can’t connect to server” message. After a few minutes This message popped up on the site:

Unfortunately, the Ghosts I-IV site is down for the next few hours for maintenance.

We quietly released this album last night without any warning, and without any press. Because we know how devoted our fans are, we planned for an overwhelming response, and expected heavy traffic. To our surprise, the traffic was more than three times what we anticipated, and has only been getting heavier throughout the day. The response has been absolutely phenomenal, and we couldn’t be happier, but our servers have taken a beating, causing numerous problems with the download site. Our developers, who have been working non-stop to combat the surge of traffic, feel that taking the site down for a few hours to fix some crucial issues is the best way to get things running smoothly again. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

I just wanted to take a couple of minutes out of my busy day to let everyone know that Trent Reznor has delivered unto us a new Nine Inch Nails album entitled Ghosts I-IV. Ghosts is comprised of 36 individual tracks, unlike all other NIN albums this is entirely instrumental. So, if you are looking for angst ridden ranting you’ll have to look somewhere else. Out of complete lack of a better description, I will regurgitate Reznor’s own description of the project:

I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.

Trent continues to ride his own bandwagon by offering this album up in a myriad of formats and price scale, from free 9-song digital download, to a $300 Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition Package that includes:

Instead of writing any honest to goodness reviews—which I’ve noticed tend to get long in the tooth and I really don’t have to time for at the moment—I decided to just let you in on what new(ish) and exciting things I’ve been spinning.

For the record, I think that it is still safe to call it “spinning” since, while not exactly a record, your hard drive does a considerable amount of twirling around to play your music.

While The Golden Foretaste of Heaven’s sound is nothing revolutionary it does mark a new direction for Alec Empire and the DHC gang. Along with the new sound also comes a new label to distribute it—Eat Your Heart Out. With a bubbly lettered logo and a DIY ethos, Alec and the gang are primed to set the world on fire… or something to that effect.

Alec Empire is no stranger to change, and fans of his music have come to expect a certain degree stylistic variation from one project to the next. Though, historically Alec’s work has gotten harsher—going from the scream infused techno sounds of Atari Teenage Riot that he coined as Digital Hardcore to glitch electronica, and then to noise metal in his more recent albums. Contrary to this trend, The Golden Foretaste of Heaven is actually quite tolerable by the average listener’s standards. I mark this by the fact that Ivy didn’t tell me to turn it off or rankle whilst playing it for most of the weekend.