For once we decided not to leave ourselves open for getting something wrong and remembered that you can’t physically get hold of this new tune from the UK’s worst drug-taking band, Keane.

Unless you’re one of those posh industry types, this song is unavailable to buy on CD, vinyl or even from one of those fancy digital downloading services. Though we assume it’s on file sharing sites alongside the mis-titled new Elvis and Frank Sinatra album.

Usually we don’t bother telling you how awesome or shoddy a single is, but seeing as it’s free release that didn’t get that much publicity compared to other free downloads, offered by the likes of Radiohead and Sigur Ros, we thought we’d make you aware. Spiralling is taken from Keane’s yet to be released (but probably available illegally on the internet) third album Perfect Symmetry.

Gone are the earlier vocals of fatter-looking lead man Tom Chaplin, who previously sounded like a choir boy whose angelic vocals had crashed head on with him breaking into puberty. 2008 sees a different and experimental sounding vocal style – maybe it was the cocaine, we don’t know, but he seems to be taking on a bit more of an aggressive edge to his singing style. Gone is the quite timid whimper that was sometimes a bit awkward to listen to, but still delighted thousands of Radio 2 listeners.

When trying to work out the reason for this change, it may not be down to him snorting cocaine off the arsecrack of a model. Tom may have been given peppermint tea before the vocal take instead of mint tea. It would piss us off, that’s for sure.

Following strange lyrics from Feeder and their single We Are The People, Keane have managed to arrange the lyrics into questions for fans to answer. Hooray for interactive fun! Instead of the song breaking down and building back up again as per usual we are instead hit with a barrage of questions. Don’t worry, they won’t fry your brain – Chaplin asks if we want to:

“Be a winner, Be an icon, Be Famous, Be the President, Start a war, Have a family, Be in love.”

Because we’re nice, we’ll give you the answers:

“We already are – ask Alan Mcgee, only if it involves free things off PR people, only if we didn’t have to campaign for a year, no – because we struggle to even start a computer up sometimes, we are one happy family and yes – but not with the people from Keane.”

The lyrics are a bit too kooky for a band as commercial as Keane, and they would work better coming from some pissed off communist rapper who is integrating you through his lyrics and why you are a sucker to globalisation.

Not from a posh podgy boy and his mates whose idea of fun on a Friday night is ringing doorbells and running away whilst laughing like people who’ve just seen a pair of tits for the first time.

So what about the music? Well the two bods who no-one seem to know about are still performing. Richard Hughes still bangs the drums and Tim Rice-Oxley is still on the keyboard.

After two albums of just using the boring piano and not even altering the pitch Rice-Oxley has discovered the effects button and decided to jazz things up a bit. Sadly this new direction of incorporating diluted electronic sounds and vocal tweaks doesn’t work.

At best the song sounds like a shoddy remix using the successful song formula that Keane constantly used with songs such Somewhere Only We Know and Everybody’s Changing. With so much free music software for bedroom producers to use, it really just sounds like someone has attempted to remix the older tracks and failed badly.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the daring leap of going hip and copying the dying trend of indie bands with synthesizers simply falls flat on its arse. As this is a free release, we can only hope that the real version suddenly appears and those crazy Keane boys have pulled an early April fool on us, or it’s never going to be anything more that poor.

Still, it’s only a free download. If you don’t like it, e-mail the song around as one of those crap joke chain messages. Title it as “best thing you’ll ever hear” before deleting the song off of your computer and freeing up the space it took up for porn or a better sounding track.

There are a lot available. Trust us.

Thankfully, hecklerspray isn’t Kid Rock, or these waffle houses we’ve visited would have to worry about more than just their topping stocks – they’d have to worry about us punching and kicking people in them because we’re a bit miffed about something and presumably have some serious issues with the waffle-maestros out there.

Yes, everyone’s favourite rock… star? Well, whatever he is, young Robert J Ritchie has been found guilty on one charge of battery by those that make these kind of decisions. ‘Courts’, apparently. Pamela Anderson’s ex-hubby has been sentenced to 12 months probation, 80 hours community service, six hours of anger management classes and presumably has been banned from eating waffles, as they seem to make him go crazy. Kid was also handed a whopping $1,000 (about £500, as fans of stronger currencies are sure to know) fine to make his misery complete, and this final blow is sure to cripple the 37-year-old financially, leaving him destitute and alone.

Maybe.

Regardless, nothing can take away from the fact that Kid Rock was charged, after pleading a no contest, with the crime of battery. In an eatery that specialises in batter-based consumables. Hecklerspray is sure that the irony was not only intentional, but also a subtle viral marketing technique to get word of Rock’s new album out to the masses, as well as secretly encouraging us all to go out and eat some fried batter. Those marketing whores – we see through you. We know all.

The incident occurred last October and involved members of Rock’s crew, two of whom received similar charges to Captain Kid, who had originally pleaded not guilty. Though his crew probably didn’t get handed the incredible six hours of anger management, which is sure to have absolutely no effect whatsoever. Because it’s six hours of anger management. At least it isn’t six hours of the film Anger Management, as that would likely have completely the opposite effect to that originally intended.

The one-time American bad ass, whatever that may imply, has been on the receiving end of some rare positive press in recent months, with the success and popularity of his new album both surprising and confusing the opinion-makers out there. We at hecklerspray are not confused, however, as it is clear to see that directly ripping off ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ in the most brazen way possible, not trying to hide it, going so far as to sampling the original in said rip off, then having a bit of a ruckus in a Waffle House is the way to a million-selling record.

Right, where’s that copy of Dance e-Jay? The hecklerspray version of ‘Freebird’ needs to be made. Though we don’t seem to have any Waffle Houses nearby… will a fracas in a Dixie Chicken work as well, or does it have to be battery in a batter-based business? Damn.

Oh, and you get to be complete and total prannocks about seemingly everything involving the internet, yet still somehow manage to maintain the credibility that would clearly be destroyed if you were any other musical act in the world. Things, they are strange.

For this time Metallica have decided that allowing people they have invited to listen to their new music to review it would be something of a cardinal sin. Possibly on a par with the holocaust, but we’re still waiting for a quote on that one.

It all began a few days ago when the band invited a number of music journalists to hear their new material, somewhere in London. These critics gorged their aural senses with the gravelly-voiced delights of James Hetfield and co. and returned to their respective abodes, fresh in the knowledge that they could freely impart their newfound wisdom to the fans of the world.

Unfortunately, these journos seemed to forget that to satiate the hunger of these waiting Metallica fans they would have to use the tool most hated by the band: the internet. In using this evil device – which was probably crafted by Satan no less – the information pertaining to the new album was uploaded onto a few blogs.

Good God, what were they thinking?!

It didn’t take too long for Metallica to get wind of this though, and soon enough they were out bullying the sites where reviews were hosted, forcing them to withdraw the offending articles.

Just as with the horror that was Napster and its ridiculous idea of a future where digital distribution could thrive, the tiny, underprivileged band managed to safeguard their music and their reputation once more.

So thank you, Metallica. Thank you for being so utterly, completely and totally insane. Thank you for hating technology, discouraging innovation and stamping down on all those far smaller than you. It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that you’re still a bunch of tossers.

But get this, they're not. Rumour has it that Amy Winehouse's new songs are called things like I Love Moonbeams And Glitter-Monkeys and Boys Make My Heart Go Cock-A-Doodle-Doo! and are all so happy that they could probably be used on a Haribo advert.

Just kidding – Amy Winehouse's new songs are so depressing that her friends think she'll kill herself soon. But we had you going, didn't we? April fool!

The list of things – self-inflicted or otherwise – that Amy Winehouse has to deal with every day includes self-harm, the abuse of hard drugs, some rubbish tattoos, a husband incarcerated for a violent attack, constant media scrutiny and an illness that makes her skin look all weird.

Ironically these are the exact same circumstances that Lipps Inc went through when they wrote Funky Town, but Amy Winehouse seems to have veered off in another direction. Amy Winehouse, you see, is in the process of writing a new album. And how do you follow up the multi award-winning biggest-selling album of 2007? Simple – by being so weirdly fixated on death that it makes The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers sound like Rhythm Is A Dancer. Digital Spy reports:

A source revealed: "Her next album is darker than ever. Amy’s got low self-esteem anyway but her skin has made her want to hide away from the rest of the world. And we have started noticing more and more cuts on her arms. Her problems are pushing her over the edge and she’s turning into a depressed recluse. It’s not good for her to stay in so much. People try to get her to leave the house and tell her not to worry about what people say. But she’d rather sit around her dingy flat all day writing about death."

Which is weird, because we heard that Amy Winehouse's new album was going to be a set of Christmas songs recorded with Mika. Actually, if that's the case it explains the depression completely. Imagine being shut in a soundproofed room with Mika for weeks at a time. We want to kill ourselves, and we're just imagining you imagining being trapped in a room with Mika. We can only imagine how Amy feels.

Anyway it all sounds very serious, and those around her must fear that Amy Winehouse will imminently try to commit suicide if these lyrics are as dark as everyone says. But on the plus side, her songs will probably be used less on Dancing On Ice and X Factor if they're called things like The Shrieking Unrelenting Blackness Of My Poisoned Soul. So it all balances out really.

Besides, just because Amy Winehouse is writing some depressed lyrics, it doesn't mean that she's going to kill herself. Look at Ian Curtis, for example.

OK, bad example. 

Read more:

New Winehouse album is 'suicidal' - Digital Spy 

However, the truth is a little more boring. Instead of, say, soundtracking an avant-garde movie about radio static with a series of dissonant chords played on the back of a kettle, Cliff Richard has instead decided to let his fans choose how much they want to pay for his new album entitled Love… The Album. But it's pretty much entirely irrelevant what hare-brained scheme Cliff Richard has dreamed up to sell his new record, because it rests on the hinges of Cliff Richard fans using the internet to preorder the album, and in our experience most Cliff Richard fans are so technologically backwards that they've only just learnt that DVDs aren't for spreading jam on and trying to eat like shiny Ryvita.

The music industry is changing, and acts need to adapt or die. That's why Madonna has signed her life away for $120 million, it's why Prince gave his album away for free with a newspaper and it's why The Charlatans are giving their album away as a free download, not because there's only about six people left who would have paid for it anyway. Crucially it's also why Radiohead let people choose how much they paid for their latest album In Rainbows, a tactic that will probably be most fondly remembered for the way it inspired Cliff Richard's latest gimmick.

Believe it or not, but Cliff Richard has always been a cutting edge innovator. In the 1950s Cliff Richard more or less brought rock and roll to Britain single-handedly, then in 1981 Cliff Richard invented the trend for twirling around shopping centres on rollerskates with epic mullets while listening to cassette walkmans thanks to his seminal Wired For Sound video. It's also a little known fact that Cliff Richard owned the world's first toaster, although back then technology was such that it was the size of six barns and took three weeks to toast each slice of bread. Plus Cliff Richard invented religion.

So with all of this in mind, it's little wonder that Cliff Richard has seen fit to hop on the music industry revolution and offer his new album to fans for whatever price they like. So long as it's between £3.99 and £7.99 and enough of them do it otherwise he's probably not going to bother. BBC News reports:

Sir Cliff Richard plans to cut the price of his new album if enough fans order it ahead of its download release. The maximum cost of Love…The Album is £7.99, but the singer says it could drop to £3.99 if there is the demand. Sir Cliff said: "We either keep one step ahead of the technology which is changing our industry so radically – or we throw up our hands and quit." But it is not clear how many orders are needed to bring the cost of the album which is due out next month. However all fans will ultimately pay the same price for the record.

Wait a minute, this isn't like Radiohead at all. This is like Cliff Richard offering to drop the price of his album slightly if loads of people preorder it instead of just mooching past it in Asda and thinking it'll do as a Christmas present for their Mum. If this is Cliff Richard's way to ensnare the kids into buying his music, he's going to be sorely disappointed. As it is Cliff Richard's music already scares children, but since his new album is basically Cliff Richard Sings The Hits Of Daniel Bedingfield And Ronan Keating we'd be surprised if children didn't instantly burst into flames and run round the streets clawing at their ears the second they heard it.

Read more:

Cliff Fans 'Control Album Cost' - BBC