So here we go, Slayer just entered the “app age” with the launch of Slayer: Pinball Rocks, a new pinball game app developed in conjunction with American Recordings/Columbia Records, Sony Music Entertainment and Gameprom.

Slayer: Pinball Rocks

“As a life-size pinball player, this looks so awesome,” said Slayer’s Kerry King. “It looks really fun and entertaining, with a shot of evil, and it could definitely keep me up all night with a few shots for myself…”

Slayer: Pinball Rocks should appeal to both long-time and new Slayer fans, as well as any pinball enthusiast, by giving gamers multi-ball play and tap-along mini-game, as well as cool visual elements like spinning razor blades, guitars, amps, concert lights, and a skull that eats your ball and spits it out through its eyeball. As you might have guessed, this is all accompanied by music courtesy of Slayer.

Slayer: Pinball Rocks is available worldwide for $2.99 from the App Store. The game includes original voiceovers from Slayer members as well as songs from Slayer’s latest American Recordings release, World Painted Blood.

This app has been developed by Gameprom, a company famous for its series of Pinball games for iPhone and iPad.

See a video of Slayer: Pinball Rocks below:

Have you tried this out? Thoughts?

The full interview is available at this location, read few excerpts from it below (the most practical ones, in my opinion):

What sort of tips can you give to new music bloggers and new musicians looking to establish the direction of their own blogs?

As Seth Godin recently warned, “the Internet is almost full”. Picking readers’ attention is harder and harder and harder each year and even month or week. I don’t think you need to afraid to fail though, remember that it’s all about fun (good luck if you began blogging to get rich). Experiment, try things that no one or only few have done before, see the results and either stick to the new direction or try something new again. Your goal is to stand out against the crowd of blogs in your niche, so experimenting by itself will do a lot for you.

If you are a musician, of course just blog in any way you can, even if your grammar skills suck. Don’t do it for the sake of being trendy, do it for fun. Keep your posts short if you are not wordy (most readers will appreciate that!), but say something cool each time you leave a post. You are a rock star, and your life IS interesting to others by default. What seems boring to you will sound spicy to others, especially your fans.

Did you do any research to learn new and more effective ways to establish and promote your blog? If so, where did you receive the best information from?

I had been spending hours reading dozens of blogs dedicated to that, like Copyblogger, ProBlogger, Blogging Tips etc. They are all great, that is fact, but these sites are mostly recycling the same information over again. I’ve learned absolutely essential things from such blogs, but also understood that there is no need to constantly keep up with each of them to get your website running great. Instead of falling into the learning trap, like I love to do, just open your online editor and write a new blog post!

Did blogging present new avenues for networking and establishing connections with people that may not have been available to you through social networks?

Yes and this is one of the most amazing things about blogging to me. Owning a blog gives great opportunities in finding new connections in your industry. Most of the people nowadays realize the influence of blogging, so you’ve got very strong chances to get a response from a high profile person even if you blog is young and small.

How can a blog network benefit new bloggers looking to establish their own brand?

If you want to build a name in your niche (and I know that you do), you should find as many blogs of the same topic as possible and start not only reading them, but constantly leaving comments in their posts, contacting their founders, asking to do guest posts. And if you do a guest post, share the best stuff you’ve got!

Networking is crucial for establishing a successful blog and spending more time on networking is one of the top priorities in my to-do list for Dotted Music.

How long did it take you to establish a ‘voice’ within your writing? Do you have any tips for new bloggers looking to find their own voice?

I think I’m still establishing my voice! Writing in English is an exciting challenge by itself, as I’m Russian. But I have to note that expressing ideas in a language different from your native one proved to be healthy. You don’t have a too wide scope for writing unnecessary stuff, and so this is my advice to everyone – keep it clear and to the point.

If interested, read more over here, and be sure to check out other articles from the series – very inspiring.

Also, using a chance, I want to apology for writing here so rarely lately. You will see a lot of interesting stuff on Dotted Music very soon, so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading :)

For part one of the series, go here.

Band 1

Image credit: Nirazilla on Flickr

The first band put together their own show and instead of teaming up with another band, they hired a small group of (very attractive) women dancers to perform on the stage as the opening act. It was announced (before and during) the show that these women and the band would be hanging out with the audience ‘after’ the show at a nearby hotel lobby. People enjoyed the show and the activities that followed later. The key piece of success for the band was that they heavily promoted the event as ‘special’ and promoted the dancers (including embedded dancer videos on the band’s and club’s website) in as many places as possible. They worked very hard to promote the uniqueness of this show and told people very clearly how ‘this show’ was better and more special than previous shows. It didn’t take long for the promotion to go viral in the area. The final result: The club was packed!

During the opening song and the band’s final song the dancers came out and danced on stage, then moved into the crowd for a while and danced there too. The dancers were smart when they had the idea to integrate their act with the bands act on and off stage. They made real connections with the crowd as they mingled with them at the show and also afterwards. Both the band and the dancers did something really good for themselves. Instead of just putting on a good show and making the audience have a good time, they put a strong desire in the minds of many people there to come see them again and again.

This band did similar shows with these (and other) dancers as well as comedians and other acts (both musical and non musical) to keep their shows different from each other so that people would not only get off their butts to come to see the band for the first time, but also for a second, third, fourth, fifth and more times.

Band 2

I recently saw a second band play in Chicago. Their show also had other ‘acts’ that were not bands, including a pair of very attractive fire eating women who the crowd went absolutely crazy for. The only problem was there were only about 100 people in the venue to see the show (the club can hold up to 1,300 people).

The band knew the audience would love the show, but they failed to promote it well and differently than how they promoted their past shows. So at the end of the night they had 100 people who might come back to see them again. Had they promoted the event as the first band did, they would have had several hundred people coming back to see them again.

Had the show been promoted and organized more similarly to the way the first band had done, they would have several hundred people coming back to see them again at their next shows which would then almost be a guaranteed success (at least on the local level)…

It’s very important that your shows are unique from each other and not necessarily unique from what other bands do. In addition, the most crucial lesson to be learned is all of your ‘promotion’ needs to highlight each of your shows as unique, different and special events. It’s not enough for your shows to actually be unique, you need to always communicate that uniqueness in all of your heavy promotion.

What about your band? Well, I’m not suggesting to simply copy what the other bands did above. I’m suggesting for you to think a lot about what your band can do to make your gigs more unique and special for your fans. So talk with your band mates and brainstorm new ideas that may work for you. To learn more ideas, you can download this free eBook about getting more people to come to your band’s future gigs.

Tom Hess is a professional musician, recording artist and mentors other musicians from around the world to expand or start a music career.

If your band plays 25 gigs this year, how many of your friends/fans will come to see more than 4 of these? A very small percentage. Why?

It’s (probably) not you, it’s them. Let’s find out why and what you can do about it.

When you ask your friends/fans to come to your next live show and see you play, what are you really asking them to do? Are you asking them to watch and listen to you perform your cool songs? No.

In reality, you are really asking people to travel all the way to some dirty club where they need to pay to get in the door. Then they will find themselves surrounded by intoxicated people who scream in one’s ears because the music is too loud to talk, pay for overpriced drinks (and bad food), stand (or sit if they can find a chair) through an opening band they likely have little or no interest in, then wait again an additional 15 minutes as the stage changes from one band to the next, then finally they get to stand through 90 minutes of your band’s cool songs in a room that is booming with muddy bass frequencies because the sound man does not know how to properly mix bands in a room that was never acoustically designed to have loud music played in. After the show is over they leave the club and drive home with their ears ringing and a headache.

So if that’s what you ask them to do the first time, they come out to see you play… What are you asking them to do the second time? … And the third time? The same thing of course.

Photo credit: zestrokes.tumblr.com

Compare that with going to see a movie. You go to the nearest theater, you buy a ticket, you ‘sit’ through 5 minutes of previews, then you watch the movie. Afterwards you are home in maybe 15 minutes.

Or compare going to see your band’s live show with staying at home and watching TV, listening to music, surfing the internet, or a long list of other pleasurable, easy and convenient things people can do.

The point is this: people have easier, and more convenient alternatives to have fun next weekend besides coming to see you (or any other band) play live.

As you can see, musicians fight an uphill battle to fill the venues we are performing at. We have a lot of work to do in order to get people off their butts to see your band’s next live show.

Your friends and fans really need to know if it’s going to be worth all the hassle described above before coming out again to see basically the same show a second, or third, or fourth time.

You first need to create a better and more unique experience for your fans from one show to the next. Some bands change the songs they play from show to show. Changing the set list does help a little bit, but you need to do more than that to really change what your fans will expect to experience.

Some bands try to be uniquely different from other bands. You don’t need to be different from other bands, you need to be a good band that puts on gigs which are often unique from each other! People need new reasons to come back to see you again and again. Download this free eBook about getting more people to come to your band’s future gigs.

Think about what your band can do to make your shows unique from each other. Then, once you have ideas in place that will make your next show more special for your audience, you need to clearly and strongly communicate this to people.

Read part two of “How To Get More People To Come To Your Live Shows” here tomorrow.

Tom Hess is a professional musician, recording artist and mentors other musicians from around the world to expand or start a music career.

Photo by: Steve Wampler on Flickr

Thankfully for the more corporate enterprises, though unfortunately for the independent musician, the aforementioned big guys have started to see the benefits that can be reaped using the internet. Public broadcasting is a much wider option on the internet than it is in more conventional methods, such as television and the radio. General view counts will usually be lower on the internet, but only as long as popularity is limited. Once a broadcaster reaches a reliable, wide-reaching audience, the potential for reaching even higher view counts than television. One of the main reasons for this is that your chosen piece of music is constantly available, rather than being singularly broadcast. Much less money can be earned by showing off your music online, but once you reach a certain level of popularity the income begins to fly.

In taking advantage of this, some rather interesting stuff has found it’s way on to the internet. My main example here would be things like ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’. This is a web broadcast musical, forty-two minutes long and released in installments. Rather than just music, the internet allows the perfect tool for anything that can be created, regardless of budget, cast or preparation. Advertising in these manners is usually done entirely through word of mouth. However, since the company making the video or music file already have a considerable amount of capital behind them, they can put their work out for all sorts of international syndication. While they will undoubtedly spend much more money putting their work onto television, it could easily garner a much reduced reward when it comes to the outcome.

Creating music videos, at a low budget, is an incredibly common thing for any band or musician to indulge in. While some promoters are internet based, and can thus advertise your work all across the internet, but there are still limits to it. On the internet, everybody is on an even playing field. You put your work out there, usually in the same places as most of the more popular content, and hope that it draws attention. From there though, it’s out of your hands. The content can be passed, traded and downloaded, regardless of file size or type. This, though, is where the independent musician has an advantage.

For the independent musician, peer to peer file trading is the absolute best thing for their continuing popularity. If it’s just one or two people pooling together to throw out a track, it’s no big loss to have it traded for free between a few dozen people. For the big company throwing it’s weight around, they’re looking at a gigantic loss between the flight of thousands of free copies.

In a digital economy, big business still loses millions, while the independent musician has nothing but gains.

Tom Colohue is a fiction writer and music instructor from Blackpool, England. Though his main works are in the realms of fantasy, he also writes modern fiction for multiple websites, as well as theoretical and practical music lessons for magazines.

Read also: Effects Of The Internet: Musical Mobility, The Effects Of The Internet: Contract Giveaways, The Effects Of The Internet: “Making It”, The Effects Of The Internet: Music Distribution

Josh's mega, mega justification

Ohhhhhh Boy! I can’t wait for it to arrive! It matches my yellow and black Nike’s (courtesy of my mama)

“Doc, is it bad that I bought a guitar to match my shoes?”
“No, son, it’s called having an image.”

I can no longer justify guitars as tax breaks, even though they are. I am writing this one off in my mind as a necessary expense of visibility, which is what I’d like to discuss today.

I learned a lesson the easy way last year when I was playing my first stadium gig. OK, I was one of many local musicians playing at a sub-minor league stadium for a charity event, and only a smattering of people noticed me, but – there were close to three thousand people there, and I did get to say “What’s up, Waldorf? Are you ready to ro000ccck?”

One of my buddies said he showed up, and saw my rig set up from across the stadium. He wasn’t sure it was mine, but then saw the Plutonium orange Ibanez RG and said “oh yeah, that’s Josh’s setup.”

Visibility, be it literally, such as highway safety colored guitars, or from a multitude of positive interactions with people, is something worth boosting. Get out there and shake hands (and don’t give ‘em the dead fish grip), look people in the eye, and say “Hi, I’m here to rock your face off. Hope you enjoy!”

What can you start doing right now to boost your image in the industry and the scene?

Here’s what I’m doing – maybe you’ll get some ideas (remember, I have an over-the-top persona, blending close to a musical comedian). I know they’re specific, and may only work for me. Take it with a grain of NaCl2 (salt).

• Zany colored guitars. I’ve got the M-16 (photos coming soon; friend me on Facebook in the meantime to see it there), and the Tiger is on the way. I plan on spray painting a strat, and that’ll be my AK-47. Add that orange Ibanez, and I’m literally visible from space, bro!
• Shoes. Talk about a great conversation starter, and something for people to remember you by. My current favorites are a pair of Nike’s that match the Tiger guitar (yellow, with a black swoosh). I’ve gotten money playing street music because people liked my lime green wrestling shoes. Ironically, they walked away when I started playing, which was discouraging, but hey, I got the buck!
• Positive, professional interactions. Be polite, be on time, smell nice, thank people after the gig, and be that consummate pro that you’re striving to be.
• Talking to the crowd. It’s just fun! People seem to like it, too. Hey, it makes me feel like a million bucks. For all my cynical comments, I genuinely like people, and connecting with them from the stage, including them in the music, lifts the whole room to a better place. Are you ready to ROCK?!
• Stupid props. I’ve got a cordless drill a la Paul Gilbert (check it out on YouTube) that alternate picks really fast, and makes a cool sound with the pickups! Now that’s 9.6 volts of pure memories.
• Of course, playing good! I’m working so hard on writing, playing, and putting on the best show that I can. For me, time onstage has helped me a lot. Practice does indeed make perfect, or at least a good rock show. Well, I’m gettin’ there. I’ve come far enough to see how far I’d like to go!
• Free stuff. I’m working on my marketing strategy right now… OK, just pondering it. But it seems that an investment into free stuff like stickers, CDs, etc, is probably the best advertising budget. I’m not sure yet, and I’ll report back to you when I figure it out.

Hopefully these actions gave you a few ideas of your own. The point is – take action! All the World’s a stage… Own it!

Hey, maybe visibility can be my mega, mega justification of my new guitar on the way. Can you see me now? World, are you ready to ROCK?!

This is a guest blog post by Josh Urban. Josh is a musician with a unique perspective on music. Always a thinker, he gains insight wherever he can find it, be it in the clubs as a working musician, busking on the city streets, or teaching in the classroom. A naturally enthusiastic fellow, he is always fired up about bringing the lessons he’s learned to his readers. Maintaining a website, a blog, and a monthly newsletter, he aims to make musicians stop, think, and play with a little more intensity, integrity, and inspiration. You never know who’s listening.

Remember when you’re talking with music execs that your band is like a company. You have to convince them that you are worth investing in, and you do that by talking in business terms. Any executive is going to be impressed by someone who knows what the record label is looking for and possesses it in abundance.

1. Your music doesn’t mesh with this record company

Photo credit: tumblr.com/tumblelog/teemafia

The structure of a record company is actually a funny thing; even though we think of record labels as being huge, monolithic structures, they aren’t quite that. When people talk of getting signed to a major label record deal, they usually aren’t specifically referring to one of these labels (EMI, Sony, Warner, Universal). What they are usually referring to is a contract with one of the sub-labels that the major owns.

Major labels operate in such a way that that the chief label is usually more of a holding group than anything else. They have various kinds of labels underneath them, to specialize in certain types of music. Most major labels have smaller labels that specialize in rap, R&B, country, and rock. Your job is to find a label that focuses on your own musical direction. Do a little research. If you’re a death metal act, send your demo in to a label that specializes in metal. Match your strengths with theirs, and you become more attractive to the company. There’s also the added advantage of fewer levels of bureaucracy to wade through at a smaller label.

2. You don’t have a distinct identity

Photo credit: Emerson Merrick on Flickr

Who are you exactly? What do you play? What kind of people do you appeal to? These are the types of questions that you have to answer to appeal to record labels. If you’re torn between metal and acoustic folk music, you’re obviously going to alienate fans who would be drawn in by one or the other, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be this obvious. If you switch the type of music you play from one night to the next, you run the risk of driving away fans, even if it’s something as simple as focusing on crazy instrumental solos one night and focusing on simple, understated lyrics the next.

This isn’t to say that you can’t be an artist and combine your influences: going back to the example of folk and death metal, you can combine the two to form a cohesive whole, and attract fans to the music that that produces. You have to have your priorities straight: are you a pop band that has solos, or are you an instrumental improvisational band that has some pop melodies? Without a distinct identity you can’t sell yourself to your fans or the music company.

3. You don’t have a vision

Photo credit: weheartit.com

This is strongly linked with the last point. Where do you want to see yourself in four years? Give yourself an achievable goal, high, but within the realm of possibility. Do you want to hear yourself on the radio, or do you want to tour non-stop? Your vision of the band is going to decide what it grows into and where it grows to. If your focus is on touring, you need to focus your energy in that arena and partner with a record label whose emphasis is on high-touring groups and whose strengths match your desires. If, on the other hand, your desire is to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, you want to push your music and energy towards that goal. Think about what you want to do when you’re creating your music and looking for a label-your music should match where you want to go.

4. You don’t have any contacts with the music business

Photo credit: paperdolls.tumblr.com

This is a relatively easy thing to accomplish, compared to all the soul-searching that the previous points would take. When you know of the sublabel that you want to recruit, find out who the people are. Look them up on Facebook, LinkedIn, or any networking site. If you’re friends-of-a-friend, you’re in luck. Make friends with promoters in your area. Talk with the people who run the concert venues; they can connect you with touring bands, their managers, and perhaps even minor label workers. Make 50 e-mail addresses and write 50 different sets of e-mails to employees of the sublabel. Be creative. Woo your contacts.

5. Your stage show sucks

Photo credit: fuckyeahindieboys.tumblr.com

This point seems rather obvious, but some musicians simply don’t realize what their stage show fails to produce. Pantera labeled for years and were dismissed as crap because of faults in their live show. After they got together with Phil Anselmo they cleaned up their live show and signed to a major label, with tremendous success. Live shows are often the first point of direct contact for a major label interested in a band. Make your shows interesting: liven things up. There are already myriads of articles on this topic; there are so many things you can do to improve your performance from crowd interaction and style of playing to lights and special effects.

6. Your demos are crap

Photo credit: owlbookdreams on Flickr

Besides stage shows, this is the other point of first contact with labels. Sometimes bands will actually cut a few songs and send them in without objectively looking at the results (something that hurt Lynyrd Skynyrd in their career). A crappy demo tape will sink any chances you’ll have with a label. In the same vein, a demo can also lose a lot of what it is that makes your band unique. Whenever you’re cutting a demo, be sure that it captures your identity and vision from points 2 and 3. Even if your live show and your songs themselves capture you as a band, your demo may need some tweaking to show that to the label workers. It may even be something as simple as tweaking the levels—double-checking your work is worth your while.

7. You aren’t popular enough — you don’t have enough fans

Photo credit: no3rdw on Flickr

This may seem like a “duh” idea to most people, but it’s not quite as cut and dried as it may seem. Panic! at the Disco was able to sign with a label before they ever played a live show. You may also be in a town where there aren’t as many people as a city, so you can’t acquire the volume of fans that other bands can. In this case you have to show the label that you have the ability to draw in a high percentage of the people around you. A band from nowhere with 500 fans is more attractive to a label than a big city band with the same amount.

Make your case with the label executives: tell them about your drawing power. It’s a principle to start small before you expand on a much larger scale, and if you can make the case that you succeeded on at your own small local level, it can be very persuasive to the executives. But this doesn’t mean that you should content yourselves with the fans you already have. As a musician you should constantly be trying to reach out to fans in any way you can, through myspace, by posting videos on youtube, giving free concerts, playing at fans’ birthdays, writing thank you songs, etc. Again, there’s a wealth of material written on how to connect with fans.

8. Your music’s good, but I fell asleep when I was talking to you

Photo credit: Laurence 2 on Flickr

Somewhat linked to stage presence, this deals with the fact that some people can play guitar like gods but are incredibly boring to talk to. They lack any charm or charisma when they’re involved in a one-on-one conversation, and this is a kiss of death for any major aspirations for success. If you lack this skill, that puts a cap on the top end of your success, which decreases your value in the eyes of the music industry. Improve your personal skills. Act confidently. Reading up on how to handle interviews will help you out in this area.

9. It’s the Recession, sorry

Photo credit: andrewinpompey on Flickr

This is the dumbest excuse on the list. This is simply an excuse for something else. If you are attractive to a company, they will sign you. This just means that you’ve got to work more on the other items of this list than you would otherwise. Sell yourself to the company, use items 1-8 to prove to them that you’re well worth the investment. You’ve just got to be more persistent and make them see the incredible opportunity they have to invest in you as an artist.

10. You’re from the middle of nowhere

Photo credit: Simon Pais-Thomas on Flickr

This is a point that’s been made easier to overcome through the digital revolution, but is still one that can handicap your desirability to record companies. The obvious answers to this are to move somewhere else and to tour frequently in larger cities to put yourself in front of a large group of fans and record executives. You can also help to overcome the obscurity of your origins by pushing a lot of your music on the internet and promoting things that way, but this alone probably won’t cut it.

If you want to strike it big, you’re going to have to have a decent-sized fanbase in a city to prove yourself to a major label, but you can also go through the stepping stone model by signing to an indie, using that label to help you out touring and recording, and then once you’ve established a large enough base, signing with a major label.

Conclusion

These are ten of the most important reasons that record labels will reject you. If you can successfully work each of these factors to improve your position, you can make yourself very attractive to a record label. Good luck – remember to use knowledge about the labels to your own advantage.

Ben Histand is a fourth-year Business student with an interest in finding out how pop culture works, and has spent entirely too much time finding out how Marvin Gaye is the same as Led Zeppelin, and why Led Zeppelin sold a whole lot more albums.

In the Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion! app players embark on an adventure taking them through six districts in the game, each featuring the distinctive style of a band member. The master goal is to retrieve the band’s stolen music track – Blackbirds, an unreleased Linkin Park song made exclusively for the game. The song is unlocked upon completion of all missions inside the game (I’ve heard it doesn’t take that long to do it, which is logical).

Production on the game began more than a year ago, with the band (vocalists Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington, drummer Rob Bourdon, guitarist Brad Delson, DJ Joe Hahn and bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell) working with Artificial Life, Inc. on various aspect of the game, such as storylines, gameplay, character design and music. Mike Shinoda designed the band members’ avatars and edited every line of dialogue.

The iPad app renders the adventure with HD graphics, and a user interface that has been redesigned to utilize the iPad’s larger screen.

Among the game’s highlights are original and 8-bit remixes of Linkin Park tracks including “New Divide,” “One Step Closer,” “In The End,” “Crawling,” “QWERTY,” “Hands Held High,” “Faint,” and “No More Sorrow.

Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion! game screenshot

Additional game features, according to the press release:

• Personalization of players’ avatars and apartments provide a unique community experience
• Non-player characters (NPCs) inhabit the world, adding drama to the gaming experience
• Shopping for virtual items with coins awarded by winning fights and completing missions
• Earning trophies for adding friends to the rebellion
• A news feed to stay up-to-date with Linkin Park
• Facebook and Twitter integration connecting millions of social network users worldwide

But the main feature of the app is probably that it’s not a rhythm based game!

For more details about Linkin Park 8-Bit Rebellion! visit this website. And check out the trailer below:

On a side note, don’t forget to enter our latest giveaway for a chance to win 1,2,3’s colored Confetti 7″ vinyl for simply “liking” the Dotted Music Facebook page!

For those musicians who are wanting to break into the industry, do you have any business advice?

Clint Lowery

The whole landscape of marketing is a lot different than when Sevendust first started. It’s got its pros and cons. The great thing is that anyone can get exposure through the Internet. There are so many avenues and so many ways to get yourself out there.

If you have the music to back it up, sometimes it just takes a small seed of promotion to get out there. If you have the music and the whole package to back that up, you plant that seed and it’s going to grow. If you have something that people want to hear and want to see, they are going to come and see it and buy it. They’ll spread the word. People want to be the first people to tell other people about this cool new band.

If you have the goods, you’ll do good. If you have an average band that relies on the smoke and the mirrors, you’re only going to go so far. If you have a real niche and something that’s new and liberating, people are going to get it.

If you have an average band, you’re going to get average results.

Read the full Amy Kelly‘s interview with Sevendust guitarist Clint Lowery when it’s up on UG later this month.

Myself, FYSed

Upon completion, the photos can be saved and sent to either Facebook or Twitter. Or posted on a blog, like here on the right (I decided to keep it simple, as I look dumb even with only those sunglasses added).

As the announcement says, Four Year Strong have always embraced the idea of not taking themselves too seriously and now, they have spread that philosophy with FysYourself. Hours after its launch, FysYourself reportedly attracted the likes of Pete Wentz, Paramore’s Hayley Williams and over 10,000 other viewers.

Fans will have the opportunity to enter a contest with their FysYourself “masterpieces,” and the best entry will receive the ultimate Enemy of the World prize package: FYS Skatedeck, vinyl, CD, shirt, poster, pin pack, and tickets to see the band live.

What has been done here is relatevely simple technically wise, which only confirms that a viral idea doesn’t require an enormous budget.

My advice: if you are thinking of what game concept could be adopted for your own brand, just go to a random online collection of Flash games for inspiration – you will get dozens of ideas. But if you don’t care about viral promotions, or just goofing off at your computer: go FysYourself.