After an excruciatingly-long five year break (not including their awesome 2008 side-project, Foxboro Hot Tubs), punk-rockers Green Day finally return this month with the apparently “phenomenal” ’21st Century Breakdown’.

The album is set to be released worldwide on May 15th, but lucky for us, rad music service, We7, have blagged exclusive rights to stream the new album online from today (May 11th)…for free!

It’s undeniable that Green Day have big things to live up to, namely in the form of 2004’s worldwide smash, ‘American Idiot’. Amazingly, however, Rolling Stone have gone as far to comment that ’21st Century Breakdown’ makes Green Day’s previous album sounds like a mere “warm-up”, claiming their new release is “better, more masterful and confident”.

‘Know Your Enemy’, the fierce debut single from ’21st Century Breakdown’, has already made waves across the country. But this rockin’ track is just a minor dip into the massive masterpiece that is ‘Breakdown’. The album has 18 tracks, and lasts an electrifying 70 minutes. It’s so long, that Green Day have chosen to split it up into three acts, titled ‘Heroes and Cons’, ‘Charlatans and Saints’ and ‘Horseshoes and Handgrenades’.

So if you just can’t wait to get your hands on the album this Friday, be sure to head over to We7.com tomorrow morning to listen to the incredible ’21st Century Breakdown’ in it’s full-blown punk rock glory.

However, the Green Day fun doesn’t stop there, oh no! If you fancy downloading some of their older material while you’re there, We7 will also be offering up the band’s extensive musical back catalogue at a special reduced price in celebration. Plus! On top of all of that, We7 will also be giving away two personalised, framed presentation discs of ’21st Century Breakdown’ to a couple of very lucky winners.

So, for a day, of erm, Green Day, head over to We7.com tomorrow for just that!

(We7 is an ad-funded free music service and integrated download store. Users can listen to over 3.5 million tracks from all four majors and hundreds of independents and pay to download what they love. Setup in 2007 by Peter Gabriel, Steve Purdham, Gareth Reakes and John Taysom, We7 has pioneered new techniques and ideas in technology and business models.)

We’ve had quite a busy week here at TGTF, lining up some great things we’ll be covering later this year. In the mean time whilst I’ve been all busy and stuff, it seems it’s all been kicking off in the music industry.

First up, The Boxer Rebellion (one of those band names you know, but can’t pop your finger on any of their tunes, and pictured top) have suprisingly had their second album spring high up the iTunes chart, catching everyone by suprise it seems. Having been signed by Alan McGee who released their first album, they were dropped leaving them to self-release their second album, Union, which is currently riding at number 6 on the iTunes chart (but has been as high as #4) and doing rather well, thank-you-very-much. Think hazy rock that needs to be played in a smoky dingy backstreet pub. Part The Music, part Editors, part early Verve, expect darkness and hairy men. If that’s cool with you, check out the first single, Evacuate, which is available from iTunes free at the moment as their “Single of the Week”.

You’ve probably all been reading about the claim made today by the “industry big boys” about how “95% of all music downloaded is not paid for”. However, I found an interesting quote from Steve Purdham, the CEO of free music service We7, commenting that “It would be more scary if current revenue forecasts showed that the 5% paid for was the real size of the market – what the 95% shows is the absolute phenomenal demand for music delivered via the digital ‘interweb’”. Nice way of looking at it, and good to see some industry bods actually accepting this fact.

Finally, I’ve had one tune in my head recently – Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead (below). Wait until about 1:20 when it really kicks in – it’s amazing. Almost reminds me of a coat zipper flying up and down, but that’s just my slightly crazy little mind.

Photos of Boxer Rebellion are from Tessa Angus

The amount of emails we’ve been getting this past week has been quite something – so many new opportunities, great bands getting in touch, and some quite bizarre questions too (including one genius who asked if TGTF was a “music website”…. erm, last time we checked it was!)

First up, Daniel Merriweather (pictured top) has a new single out on February 2nd. Recognise the name? Yes, it’s him from “Stop Me”, Mark Ronson’s massive hit. He’s got a great voice, and he’s embarking on a solo career at the moment, starting with “Change”, the first single to be taken from his forthcoming “Love & War” album. I have a feeling I’m gonna have this stuck in my head, much like “Stop Me”. Watch the video below, and fall in love with him…

Some of you may have spotted that iTunes have announced a new flexible pricing scheme for their music, and (perhaps the biggest news story) have ditched the irritating copy protection from their songs (Guardian news story here). It seems to have been hailed by just about everyone, with Popjustice commenting “Does this DRM-free thing mean that people have now totally given up on the idea of revenue through music sales?” (Twitter). We7’s CEO Steve Purdham (who we first mentioned last week) hailed the news by commenting that “the spectrum of choice for music lovers is now greater than ever before and the stage is set for 2009 to really open the boundaries of digital music consumption”. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Coming up on There Goes The Fear, we’re going to catch a preview screening next week of a new MTV show about Pete Doherty, and we’ll be bringing you a live review of the Kerrang! Relentless tour after the 20th when we catch the tour in Oxford. We may also be catching Keane in February, and possibly the Gaslight Anthem too. Yes, it’s all go.

As ever, if anyone wants to write for TGTF please don’t hesitate to contact us – tell us a bit about yourself, and we’ll take it from there.

A new year, and hopefully an even more successful year than 2008 was for TGTF. We spent New Years in London catching the fireworks on the Embankment. Amazing times, and was quietly amazed to see two of my favourite new bands, Passion Pit and Chairlift making the mix by the DJs (okay, the second isn’t quite as new, but new to us!)

MP3: Passion Pit – Sleepyhead
MP3: Chairlift – Bruises

However, as much as we love Bon Iver’s Skinny Love, we think it hardly fits the profile of party music – still, that’s my only rant. We were like kids in a chocolate factory with the likes of Friendly Fires, Blur, Oasis, Passion Pit, Justice, Simian Mobile Disco and more all were mixed together… heaven!

One of the side affects of me cavorting off to London was that we forgot to close the survey for 2008 on time. So, it’s been open for an extra day, apologies for that. Anyone would have thought we’re the BBC running competitions.

We’ve just started going through the 85 responses, with some interesting points coming up – it seems most people dislike the colour scheme, so we need to brighten that up. You all seem to like the new bands stuff and ticket alerts, so we’ll keep them going for sure! The two £10 iTunes vouchers went to Andy and Lauren, so sorry to the others who weren’t as fortunate – we’re hoping to be able to offer some new giveaways later this month, so keep your eyes peeled.

In other news, Stephen Long (pictured top right, who we introduced here) got in touch to offer us a free download of song “Passport Photographs”, which is below. Expect us to keep you up to date with his forthcoming EP, “Songs To Suit Your Mood” in coming weeks.

MP3: Stephen Long – Passport Photographs

We were introduced to Marina and the Diamonds (pictured top) over the break, and fell in love with her sound. She’s a bit of a crazy one – a combination of Greek and Welsh who spends her time between songwriting, hand-creating merchandise and selling vintage clothing.The Guardian said she has a “seriously warped mind in the body of a fox”, and her sound is rather unique – she takes on piano ballads, synth heavy bass lines, brass, bird calls, chanting and ooohs and ahhs in varying vocal ranges. Think Imogen Heap meet Bjork with a hint of a few other artists I can’t think of right now. Have a listen and let us know what you think.

As you can probably guess, we spent much of the holidays (yes, it’s an American phrase, but it fits well for those who aren’t big Christmas / NY fans!) finding new music, and catching up on stuff we may have missed in 2008. We also stumbled across We7, a great service that seems to be like on-demand radio – choose what song / album / artist you want to listen to, and it plays them, peppered with advertisements. They were ad-free for a bit of the Christmas break, and offer a great chance to have a “taster” of an album you like or re-hear a song you love. We love last.fm, but much of the music on the site only has 30 second snippets, which is a shame. Check it out and enjoy.