Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager, has been crying angry little tears in recent days, as all his careful planning for his band’s new album’s spolier-free release has been ruined by… well, by whatever kind of deviant it is who would not only spend time and effort trying to obtain pre-release files of a U2 album, but would then want to infect innocent peoples’ ears with it.

Sicko.

Hecklerspray dreams about making the world a better place. Homelessness, for example, solved by inviting everyone with nowhere to sleep to spend the night huddled together in Gordon Ramsay’s facial crags. The pain of poverty eased by allowing each of the world’s poorest people thirty seconds to suckle on Salma Hayek’s titties.

This last one came true recently, and we may be about to score again. Our dream where U2 are forced into penury – and have to scavenge through our dustbins trying to find some scraps for their tea – has taken a step closer to becoming fact. And happily, it’s the people that love them most who are causing the impending catastrophe. Sweet!

U2’s latest album – we would’ve looked for the title, but were afraid that just reading it might cause our eyeballs to jump out of their sockets and run away screaming – has found its way onto filesharing websites and has, in news we can only describe as ‘making us weep for the human race’, been downloaded 100,000 times.

This despite unprecedented high security which included: moving the mastertapes around in armoured cars, allowing any single journalist to listen to just three notes from each track then sealing up their earholes with molten lead; and throwing would-be thieves off the scent by employing hundreds of toothless old men to put on fake Irish accents and oversized sunglasses, and wander the country at random.

How could such hardcore security have been breached? The Sydney Morning Herald reveals all:

Full CD-quality copies of every song on U2’s upcoming album, No Line On The Horizon, have been leaked on to the web after Universal Music Australia accidentally put it up for sale on its online music store two weeks early. The album – U2’s 12th – goes on sale on March 3 but it was available to download for a brief period this week on getmusic.com.au, run by Universal Music Australia. Universal Music Australia did not respond to calls asking how the track went up for sale early.

Probably because their executives were chained up in The Edge’s basement while Bono gibbered and shrieked at them like a rabid monkey, and The Drummer and The Bassplayer stood around looking a bit sheepish about the whole thing.

Call us hard-hearted (Really, go ahead. It’s a congenital condition), but we won’t be shedding tears when U2 find themselves penniless through the actions of their own fans. In fact, it would amuse us hugely if Bono was reduced to knocking on front doors in Africa, asking for ‘just a cup of rice. Come on, I gave you that massive sackful in 1985, remember?’

This is only the second time we have ever been amused by U2-related nonsense. Please, be upstanding for Mr Partridge.

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Hey hang on a minute! U2 already are basically a group of old men repeating themselves time after time! Well that’s our opening line buggered up, then. Anyway, if you want to see U2 even more decrepit and creatively strapped than they already are, then you’re in for a treat – U2 are never splitting up. Ever.

It’s true – The Edge said so. And you shouldn’t doubt a man named after a horticultural barrier, because that’d be stupid.

These are testing times for U2. Their new album No Line On The Horizon marks a serious departure for the band, because Bono’s had his hair cut for it. And that’s risky. Honestly.

People knew where they were with long-hair Bono – uplifting lyrics, songs that all sound like much-worse versions of Where The Streets Have No Name and iPod commercials. But short-hair Bono? Jesus, that’s much worse. That’s songs with no melody, giant glittery lemons and – gulp – artistic exploration. We know. It’s horrifying.

But that’s what No Line On The Horizon is – a short-hair Bono album. That’s why new single Get On Your Boots sounds like an unholy mix of We Didn’t Start The Fire, this song and U2 when nobody liked them. And it’s why people have started speculating about when U2 will split up.

Actually, that’s a gigantic lie. Nobody has started speculating about when U2 will split up, but the News Of The World asked The Edge about it anyway, probably because it was trapped in an awkward social situation with him, and asking about U2 splitting up is marginally more polite than blurting out “Why do you always wear a hat, The Edge? Is it because you’re a BLOODY SLAPHEAD?”. Anyway, this is how The Edge replied:

“If Bono was ever going to leave U2 he would have done it years ago. We’ve got too much music left in us anyway.” Afterwards The Edge — real name DAVID EVANS — spoke about their new album, No Line On The Horizon. “We’re so proud of the latest record,” he beamed. “It’s the best music we’ve ever produced — definitely back to U2’s roots this time.”

Of course Bono’s not going to leave U2. That’d be ludicrous – not only would most employers take a dim view if presented with a CV that included ‘Going “doo doo doo” on an advert for an MP3 player’ and ‘Having a made-up name’ but also, in The Edge and The Other Two, Bono has chanced upon the only three people in the world who don’t feeling like punching him square in the face after a spending a couple of seconds in his company.

So without a split in the foreseeable future, it looks like we’ll all get to look forward to the day where U2’s stage performance involves Bono hobbling about like Old Man Steptoe and… oh, wait, we’ve confused the future with the present again. We did see The Brits last week, after all.

Read more:

No Split On The Horizon – News Of The World

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Bono and the other members of U2 have been threatening to release No Line On The Horizon for a while now and finally they’ve delivered the bombshell with a March 19 2009 release. Is one new release bad enough? No, Bono has to be an extravagant twat and release it five bloody times.

Of course this isn’t a move designed to fill the bands pockets with enough cash to enjoy a lifetime supply of potatoes and Guinness. No, surely releasing the same product five different times is a celebration of all things U2 and a test to see who’d actually buy the same crap again and again. Think of it as an intelligence test without having to work out which funny shape connects the pattern.

Once people either download it illegally or stump up some cash for the bog-standard CD version, what’s going to be so special about the new album No Line On The Horizon? We have some suggestions of what we’d like to see included with the album. You know, just so Bono and the rest of his merry band of rockers can disappear further up their own arses as they rejoice together for pushing the boundaries of album packaging and superfluous additional extras.

For £20 extra, an interview with the band’s creator Larry Mullen, Jr. It would be nice to hear what he thinks. As we all know, Bono just takes over all conversation and namedrops his mates such as the Pope and Bill Clinton.

For £40 extra, a replica copy of Bono’s magical sunglasses. Maybe we’ll be able to tell if they source his power and make him act like the moron we know and love.

For £100 extra, a used hat from The Edge.

Whilst we know they’d go down stupidly well with the legions of U2 stalker fans, it seems that their record company don’t see things like us. As the NME reports, the additional three versions aren’t anything like ours:

“The digi-pack version offers the full album along with a 36-page booklet, a fold-out poster and a downloadable film by Corbijn, featuring the music of U2. A magazine version of the album comes with a 60-page soft cover magazine-style book, along with the Corbijn film as a download. The most excessive of the five releases is the box set, which features a 60-page hardback book, a second poster and a DVD version of Corbijn’s film.”

Oh wow! A poster! Something that’s printed on paper! For hours on end, we can stare in utter awe at a picture of bloody U2. Who would have thought a band would ever think of releasing pictures of themselves in moody looking poses as they stand against a backdrop of a beach, coffee shop or burning car?

And a U2 magazine? We shudder to think what crap they’ll use to fill 60 pages with. Perhaps loads of photos of their faces with captions like ‘We are brilliant’ ‘Feel the love’ and ‘Don’t eat Irish pork’.

Whatever the case, we at least know of one album that won’t feature in our 2009 best-of list. If we wanted to listen to the older generation babbling on about non-important issues, we’d check into an old folk’s home. At least there they might have cool stories about war and stuff.