Alter Bridge quickly became one of my favourite bands of all time after only being introduced to them in September 2009. In Loving Memory is one of the most beautiful songs ever. Written by Mark Tremonti (lead guitar) after his mother past away. In the performance below you can see what it means to him. Myles Kennedy's voice fits it perfectly. 

I saw Fightstar on Sunday at Picturedrome in Northampton. It was a one off acoustic / unplugged gig for around 300 people. OMG! It was fantastic! Definately the best night of the year and over all I rank it as my second favourite gig (second to only Jimmy Barnes). The whole set was quality and executed perfectly. My favourite's of the night were  Paint Your Target, Amethyst, Vincent, and Cross out the Stars but EVERY song was amazing. The covers of Jordan Sparks and Don McLean were really both nice supprises as I didn't know the songs before. I took my camera with my and my mate videos every single song! So are the Fightstar unplugged videos in one playlist. Well worth listening to. Enjoy.

Update: I had requests to remove the videos from YouTube. I have done so because, as a fan, I don't want to harm Fightstar. I only uploaded them to share and show the world how great Fightstar are. Please don't email me asking if I can send you copies because I won't. They are releasing a DVD of the show early next year so I recommend you all buy it. Check out  www.fightstarmusic.com for more information when it comes out.

Here's the set list:

1. Palahniuk's Laughter
2. 99
3. Paint Your Target (this is in the same video as 99)
4. The English Wa
5. Our Last Common Ancestor
6. Sleep Well Tonight
7. Battlefield (Jordan Sparks cover, and Fightstar's Live lounge cover)
8. Mecury Summer
9. Amethyst
10. Vincent (Don McLean cover)
11. Waste A Moment
12. Be Quiet and Drive (Deftones cover)
13. Cross out the Stars
14. Mono

So the annoucement came today, right when it was supposed to. Several annoucements came today but the most important is the headliners ofcourse. For the Knebworth, UK festival it will be Iron Maiden and Rammstein. Now that's a great first annoucement. The other bands that have so far been announced for Knebworth are Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, Slayer, Anthrax, The Cult, and Iggy and the Stooges.

The other annoucement that came today is that there will be more events. This year there will be 11 festials, 5 of which are weekenders compared to 6 events with one weekender in 2009. Poland is the only other event that has had any bands announced. Warsaw will see Metallica headline with Slayer, Anthrax, Mastodon, and Behemoth. They don't get Iron Maiden or Rammstein but Metallica who headlined all the events last year. To me it looks like the new events will get Metallica headlining as they cannot really headline 2 years running.

List of Sonisphere 2010 Dates

• Warsaw, Poland 16th June (new)
• Zurich, Switzerland 18th June (new)
• Prague, Czech Republic 19th June (new)
• Sofia, Bulgaria 22nd - 23rd June (new)
• Athens, Greece 24th June (new)
• Bucharest, Romania 25th - 27th June (new)
• Istanbul, Turkey 25th - 27th June (new)
• Barcelona, Spain 10th July
• Knebworth, United Kingdom 30th July - 1st August
• Stockholm, Sweden 7th August
• Pori, Finland 7th - 8th August

Now that's a lot of dates! Last year there was also The Netherlands or Germany on the tour but for 2010 there hasn't been any news. I can't see any room on the tour for them.

Just a quick heads up to let you know the first announcement for Sonisphere 2010 will be at 6pm GMT this Wednesday. That's less than 48 hours away now! I'll be keeping up with (well trying to) all the Sonisphere 2010 news this year. Check out my Sonisphere page now as I think I might have found the headliner!

Modern Warfare 2. The game I've been waiting for for far too long and I've not written a post about it? Fancy that. Well the main reason is because it was messed around by Play.com big style. See my Play.com complain. In the end I went for the Prestige Edition (with the night vision goggles).

Well I've had it a few weeks now and I've racked up almost 2 days playing it (single player, spec ops and multi-player) mainly on multi-player. I have to say, and it won't be supprising, that it's fantastic! I love it! Online is much faster paced than the last Modern Warfare, singleplayer is more action packed and varied, and spec ops... well there wasn't spec ops in the first one.

Modern Warfare 2

Single Player Campaign

I've completed the single player campaign and enjoyed it a lot. The story is really a possible future cold war between American and Russia. Infinity Ward didn't really hold back on the way Russia started a full on war with the US on US soil. They way IF did it was good. They made it so the cause of the war was a rouge individual and not either the US or Russia and both sides actions were understandable. The end, well it was pretty much the same as MW but slightly more tense as you watch Price almost die at the hands of Shepherd.

The credits were actually really cool. A camera panned around a museum exhibit with all scenes from the game. Something I found later on is you can actually run around the museum by using chapter selection. At the two information desk are red buttons that say do not touch. Of course you have to and what it does is bring to life ALL the characters in the exhibits and they are ALL after you! Don't worry because you have your pick of every weapon from the game.

Multi-Player

This is the main selling point of Call of Duty. Modern Warfare was so popular because of the addictive multi-player.  Modern Warfare 2 has built on what the first did and has improve it. There's plenty of game modes - free for all, team death match, domination, HQ, capture the flag, search and destroy, and others. There's even 3rd person!

Pictures

Right - Accuracy Leaderboard: As you can see I'm rocking the accuracy. It's going up all the time! My target is 25%.

Below - Kills Leaderboard: Kills don't really mean much to me as the more you play the more you should kill. Ratio is what I care about. Mine isn't as high as it should be because I was messing arond a lot with riot shield but it is increasing every game now

The biggest change is with the leveling up, perks and killstreaks. Everything is worth more points, generally about 10times what they were before. When you kill you can also earn extra points for saving a team mate, avenging a team mate, taking revenge on someone who has killed you, head shots, one shot kills and long range kills. I tend to get a lot of long range kills. Perks have been changed with some add and removed. Killsteaks have been completely change. They are now customisable. You still have 3 rewards but you can choose from about 10 different rewards ranging from UAV to a Tactical Nuke! To get a Tactical Nuke you need a 25 kill streak but by doing that you kill EVERYONE and make your team win. Other rewards include sentry guns, helicopters, air strikes, predator missiles and you can actually control some of them. 

As a little edition you earn titles and emblems. Titles are little banners that go behind your name and emblems are little badges. There are 100s titles and emblems to play with.

Spec Ops

The new addition to Modern Warfare 2 is Spec Ops. It's a series of missions that you can do alone or with a friend (much more fun with a friend). They range from sleathly sniper missions to all out gun battles again juggernauts. There are 5 levels Alpha to Echo and in each are 5 missions. Each mission has upto 3 stars you can be awarded for completing. It's cracking fun and so much better co-operative.

Call of Duty Classic

Call of Duty Classic came as a free download with the Prestiege and Hardened Editions. It is the original game rendered in HD, still the original textures, animated and sounds. It is exactly as I remembered it. It has multi-player as well but unfortunately only upto 8 players which is a shame as I remember playing some amazing 32+ player rifles only on Pavlov's House. Other than the 8 player limit to multi-player the only other bad thing is that shot is R2 not R1 and aim down the sights is L2 nor L1! It's Xbox style :(.

Just to show how much I rock, here's a screen of the 2nd game I played online.