Break out those tattered jeans and torn up flannel, because Guitar Hero: World Tour is getting a new DLC pack for the punk in all of us. Dubbed the Epitaph Punk-O-Rama Track Pack, the download features three tunes from three separate well-known Epitaph artists. It may be a bit more on the mainstream side of punk, but they're good tracks nonetheless.

Here's what you'll get (440 XBL / $5.49 PSN):

• "21st Century Digital Boy" by Bad Religion ($1.99 PSN / 200 Wii Points)
  
• "Linoleum" by NOFX ($1.99 PSN / 200 Wii Points)
• "Ruby Soho" by Rancid ($1.99 PSN / 200 Wii Points)

The track pack is available for download now in the US and Europe. Who's about to rock? We may or may not salute you.

The retailer pricing of DJ Hero found recently -- $120 bucks! -- has some folks wondering why Activision may have upped the price for its usual game-plus-peripheral combo. The company has offered an explanation answer to Eurogamer, saying, "We believe that DJ Hero will provide tremendous value for our consumers by delivering an all-new interactive music experience with over 100 individual songs that are highlighted in over 80 unique mixes, a wide variety of ..."

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Sorry, we nodded off there for a minute. Between the $250 for The Beatles: Rock Band and another $120 for Tony Hawk: Ride, we're up late a lot, worrying about affording all these plastic game controllers -- and a bigger house to put them all in.

If anyone belongs in a game called DJ Hero, it's Grandmaster Flash. The legendary musician has been at the forefront of hip-hop for basically forever, and is credited with inventing the art of messing with records to create noise, upon which the entire game is based.

In addition to appearing in-game, Flash contributed his own mixes to the soundtrack. In the video above, you can hear a segment of his mashup of Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" and N.E.R.D.'s "Lapdance." After the break, we've embedded a clip of the game featuring a mashup of his own "Here Comes My DJ" and Gary Numan's new wave anthem to isolation, "Cars."

MTV recorded footage of Flash trying the game for the first time, and let's just say his performance in the game is much more impressive than his performance of the game. For a more thorough writeup of Mr. Flash's thoughts on the game, check out GameDaily's writeup here.

Everyone's favorite plastic peripheral purveyor, Red Octane, is having a bit of a deal today. The normally $60 wireless guitar and $20 wired microphone for Guitar Hero World Tour (across all platforms) are being offered together in a $50 package -- today only!

If you're less than impressed by the GHWT deal from today, why not get into your fancy schmancy time machine and head back to yesterday when you could've gotten an even better deal? Oh, what's that -- you don't have a time machine? Guess you're stuck with the $50 dollar deal over at Red Octane's website then, fancy pants.

Wedbush Morgan Securities' 2009 industry report includes a list of the top thirty brands of 2008. The report notes that of the companies whose brands appear on the list, Nintendo, EA, and Activision were the only three with more than one brand to generate over $100 million at retail in the US last year.

And boy, did they. The top brand of the year, Guitar Hero -- perhaps you've heard of it -- was responsible for $992 million in US sales in 2008. The next two brands, Mario Bros. and Rock Band, generated $761 million and $662 million, respectively.

One company is notably absent from the top brands list: "Most strikingly," the report reads, "Sony had no top 30 brands for the third year in a row." Microsoft had two brands on the list (Gears of War and Fable) and Nintendo had four (Mario Bros., Wii Fit, Wii Play, and Pokémon). See the list of brands after the break.

Looking for another set of plastic instruments to fill that remaining spot of unoccupied floor space in your living room? Amazon has an offer that will help speed the total domination of your life by comically undersized guitars and drums. As its Deal of the Day, the site is offering the full band set of Guitar Hero: World Tour for just $89.98, a hundred bucks off the MSRP.

The item is available on PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PS2, and we doubt it'll stay in stock all day. This is one of the cheapest offers of full band kits we've seen! It's so cheap, it almost makes these music games seem affordable.

You may not know this, but April is actually the biggest month of the year for banjo sales in the US. You see, the annual Jugband Jamboree takes place in April each year, across various states in the country, but nobody attended this year thanks to those darn Guitar Heroes, Rock Bands, and Singstars.

A new report (via GI.biz) came up with the data, based on research done by firm Interpret. In fact, aside from the staggering 25 million US gamers that got down with one music game or another, data showed that these gamers purchased 67% more CDs than those who didn't enjoy rhythm-based games. In addition, 29% of these wannabe rockers actually downloaded or streamed a music video in the past three months (compared to the 15% that partook overall), and 45% listened to music via a social network (versus 32% overall). So, as much as celebrities like to bash these kinds of games, it's helping more folks get into music, which, to us, is a good thing.

Stat tracking is nothing new for FPS games, but we have to hand it to Raven for being thorough. According to MTV Multiplayer, the upcoming Wolfenstein keeps track of not only how many Nazis you kill, but the manner in which they died. Multiplayer asserts that it saw a stat screen at 36 percent completion, which noted that 639 kills had been made. Using some simple math, the blog calculated that a total of 1638.4 Nazis will meet their doom by the end of the game.

Now, we hate to criticize, but that's assuming the rate of Nazi influx is constant, which it almost assuredly is not. Still, regardless of exactly how many have fallen by the end, we take comfort in the fact that we'll know exactly how many were dissolved, dismembered, burned and electrocuted. Strangely, the game doesn't appear to keep track of the number that have killed the old fashioned way: with a bullet.

DJ Hero might be the cliquish kid sister in Activision's branching "Hero" family, but it belongs to a really big clique, according to CEO Mike Griffith. "It's certainly hitting a more mainstream and expanded audience from Guitar Hero," Griffith said of the spin-off in an interview with GI.biz. As expansive as the Guitar Hero catalog has grown over the years (enough to re-release a disc of "greatest hits"), there's potential for DJ Hero to reach far beyond, literally mixing in, well, anything.

While Griffith has his sights set on some 300 million Hero-less households, developer FreeStyleGames must be a bit more narrow-minded, lest DJ Hero come out as a cacophonous mashup. As mainstream as turntablists have become, they're still spinning for a variety of crowds. There's a difference between a game for everyone and a game with something for everyone. So it's simple then? All DJ Hero has to be is the greatest mixtape of all time.

You may find this hard to believe, but removing the Call of Duty from Modern Warfare 2's title -- it's confusing some people. In fact, according to a survey conducted by GamePlan Insights -- a game tracking service offered by OTX -- and reported by Gamasutra, 50% fewer people knew about the game.

"In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game," GamePlan head Nick Williams told the site. "That is quite a remarkable statistic." Williams went on to state his revalatory belief that the massive marketing push Activision has lined up for the game (on the scale of "biggest entertainment launch of all time") should quash any consumer confusion.

Wait -- "Activision?" We've heard of an "Activision Blizzard;" are they the same company? We're only half convinced.

If you already have a Guitar Hero guitar sitting around (at this point, it's statistically likely), RedOctane is offering an opportunity to finish your band kit and get a new(ish) game for a great price. The company's website is selling a pack containing a copy of Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, along with a drum set and a microphone for $99.99, with free shipping. That's the exact same price the company is charging for just a drum set!

This package is, inexplicably, only available for Xbox 360 and Wii, and is only available today, so you don't have too much time to think about how weird it is to sell a Guitar Hero bundle with everything but the title instrument.

Speaking to MCV, Activision CEO Mike Griffith was feeling pretty confident about his company's position in the game industry this year. "This is the best competitive position we've ever had," said Griffith, adding, "Our titles are strong, and competitive titles are a little sparser than in the past." Griffith sounds particularly proud of the Guitar Hero franchise, which he notes has its strongest lineup ever with DJ Hero, Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero all set to release this year (what, no love for Van Halen?). Griffith also mentioned Modern Warfare 2, which he says will be the biggest Call of Duty ever (no surprises there). And let's not forget Tony Hawk's Ride and Bizarre's upcoming racer, Blur.

Griffith doesn't seem concerned by competition from The Beatles: Rock Band either, saying quite simply, "Well, Rock Band is the most similar title on the market, but Guitar Hero outsells it by four to one in the US; in Europe that number is ten to one." Okay then. Griffith also shakes off the notion that Activision is flooding the market with peripheral-based games (Ride and all of the Guitar Hero games rely on peripherals), stating that the company only uses peripherals when they "define a magical experience that comes about when you marry hardware and software."

Other topics covered in the interview include Griffith's feelings about Natal and the Playstation Motion Controller, Activision's business in Europe and the continued importance of retail.