A pre-Christmas jam with some Rochefort 10

Tonight we'll have a special pre-Christmas session, with the Trapper replacing Raikan as he is traveling home for the Holidays. Sylvie will move to vocals and the Trapper will play bass. I've finally received the special order of the best beer in the world, Rochefort 10, so we'll be enjoying that as well. :)

We'll likely play between 24 and 32 unranked songs, including two weeks of new DLC (this week's DLC was early on the PS3), moving us up the "All Songs" Leaderboards.

Here is my top 3 DLC from last week:

3. "¡Viva la Gloria!", by Green Day: If you haven't heard already, "Green Day: Rock Band" will be the next game released by Harmonix. This would not have been my first choice for a band-based game, but the fact that the songs will be exportable is great news (their early songs should be a blast to play). Hopefully all future band-based games will have that feature. Now last week saw the release of the 2nd 3-pack from Green Day's latest album. To be honest the songs from that album have been fairly bland to hear and play, but "¡Viva la Gloria!" stands out from the group for its interesting transitions. The vocal intro is accompanied by some neat orchestrations, and if the drummer has fallen asleep, he's in for a rude awakening, especially at the end. :)

2. "This is War", by 30 Seconds To Mars: It's about time that we get more songs from this group. Their last DLC was released almost 2 years ago ("The Kill" and "Attack"), and it had some very interesting charts (especially on drums). What stands out for me from this group is their ability to create great build-ups (see the end of "The Kill" for example). These build-ups are also present in their 2 new songs, but an interesting addition is the great crowd sing-alongs, making the tracks even more epic.

1. "Kings and Queens", by 30 Seconds To Mars: A great song with some very tough drum sections. I particularly like the variety of the guitar chart. The build-up at the end is very powerful, having a kind of ethereal quality. In my opinion, the songs from this group are much more interesting and complex than most songs by the week's feature group, Green Day.

Honorable mention. "Gives You Hell", by The All-American Rejects: When I first heard this song at the 2008 VGAs, I found it pretty annoying. But playing it in Rock Band is surprisingly fun, especially the somewhat unique drum chart and the section at the end on guitar.