New Metallica Album.com

YOU may have a speed-inducing iPod playlist for getting pumped while running and then just hit shuffle to tune out on the D train home from work.

Well, the soldiers in Iraq are no different, using music to help them get through everything from combat missions to a good night’s sleep.

Due to advances in audio technology — i.e., the iPod — for the first time ever war has a personal and portable soundtrack. Jonathan Pieslak, a composer and associate professor of music at CUNY, wrote about the new way of war in “Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War.”

Pieslak first became interested in the subject when he was sending care packages to family members stationed in Iraq and discovered CDs were a hot commodity. After sending more CDs to an Air National Guard unit, he got a thank-you note from a major who said the CDs would be added to the library the troops share.

File sharing knows no bounds in a war zone. Songs are passed from PC to PC and played on personal MP3 and CD players, or even speakers wired into military vehicles.

“People can put [iPod] nanos in their flak jackets and they are ready to go,” Pieslak tells The Post. (more…)

UPDATE: See video of show here.

Metallica were recently filmed for an episode of Discovery Channel’s “Time Warp” which is set to air on Wednesday, April 29th. “Time Warp” is a show that uses new technologies to film all kinds of “ordinary” events and slow it way down so you can see the activity in a whole new light.

Welcome to Discovery Channel’s series Time Warp, in which MIT scientist and teacher Jeff Lieberman — along with digital-imaging expert Matt Kearney — uses new technologies to bring truly never-before-seen wonders into a form that your body can actually process.

Using the latest in high-speed photography, the Time Warp team takes some natural events (a cat licking its paw, a champagne bottle being opened) — and some not-so-natural (a water balloon to the face, a raw piece of chicken exploding) — and turns them into a thing of both beauty and learning.

You can check here for local listings. Metallica will be featured on the April 29 episode

Although the breakout of swine flu that originated in Mexico has led numerous musical acts to cancel performances there, Metallica is not backing down. According to a post at the website of Avenged Sevenfold, who will open the shows, Metallica has booked three concerts in Mexico City on June 4th, 6th and 7th. Although Mexico City is where the flu first surfaced, Mexican health secretary Jose Angel Cordova said on Thursday (April 30th) that the number of cases seemed to be stabilizing, which means the crisis could be passed by the time Metallica arrives next month.In another flu-related incident, Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher wrote on his blog that the band landed at the airport in Caracas, Venezuela only to see the place filled with people wearing masks. Gallagher added, “I swear at that point I did a massive sneeze and the entire airport fell silent and started to stare!!”

Billboard.com reported on Thursday that dozens and dozens of concerts across Mexico were canceled or postponed, while premieres and press junkets for new movies like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek and Terminator Salvation were also either scrapped or in jeopardy.

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