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With one listen to the innovative work done on “The Catalyst” by our Linkin Park:Featuring You winner, NoBrain, it’s clear that hours of work went into manipulating LP’s new single into something fresh and new. But as we mentioned before, NoBrain—whose winning version can be heard here—was just one of thousands of MySpace users who challenged themselves to reinvent the handiwork of Linkin Park.

Out of those thousands of entries, Mike Shinoda, Chester Bennington and the rest of the members of Linkin Park, narrowed it down to their twenty-favorite entries. There’s DavidBonk’s version, which strips the track down and builds it up with mechanized force—a noticeably chugging momentum that crescendos with Bennington’s shrill shriek. Or Corky G’s, which brilliantly manages to work in a drum solo amid an undulating mid-tempo dance groove. Luckily for you, a choice doesn’t have to be made—you can simply enjoy the different interpretations of “The Catalyst” by your fellow music aficionados.

We now present to you the finalists for Linkin Park:Featuring You:

When Linkin Park agreed to let a MySpace user create a new version of one of their songs, “The Catalyst,” they had to know it would be tough to pick a winner. The band weighed all the options, and in the end the winner of the Linkin Park: Featuring You contest is a man who goes by the name “NoBrain,” but is otherwise known as a MySpace user from Poland. Yes, Poland.

Mike Shinoda surprised the winner, who goes by “Chex,” via webchat to inform him he had won the contest. Chex’s version of “The Catalyst,” which you can hear here, will appear on Linkin Park’s upcoming record, A Thousand Suns. The band was so happy with the finalists, whose versions of the song we will feature tomorrow on the MySpace Music blog, that they are heavily considering placing some of them on “a European B-Side” or something of that nature, as you can see in the video below.

One of the things we pride ourselves on here at MySpace Music is bringing you closer to the bands you love. So when we found out that  Linkin Park was going to agree to let you, the wonderful users of MySpace, create a new version of one of their songs, “The Catalyst,” for their new album, A Thousand Suns, needless to say we were stoked.

Once we launched the contest, we were flat-out blown away with the quantity, and quality, of users’ submissions. Some of you flattened out the vocals, made it more hushed and simplistic, others brought the volume up to eleven and sent our collective ears to a level of mind-splitting euphoria. But alas, when the band sat down and listened to the submissions, a winner had to be chosen.

To the surprise of many (particularly one multi-platinum Caucasian rapper) Avenged Sevenfold’s new album Nightmare could debut at Number One on the Billboard Albums chart next week. That means that the band’s record would knock Eminem out of the top slot, which the rapper has held for five weeks now.

Billboard recently reported that the metal stalwarts are poised to sell an estimated 160,000-180,000 copies of Nightmare in its first week, resulting in the band’s first Number One record. In light of this exciting possibility, we spoke with guitarist Zacky Vengeance about what such an honor would mean to the band. And what he had to say was surprising.

Not everyone can play the Warped Tour 16 summers straight. Here we look back on some of the ghosts of Warped Tour’s past and reveal what they are up to today.

Photo by Lisa Johnson

Band: Midtown

Who were they?: Before New Jersey became a hotbed for mainstream emo acts, Midtown were a group of suburban teenagers attending Rutgers University, alongside the members of Thursday. However instead of focusing on the political and personal rage that powered their one-time scenemates, Midtown pioneered a brand of pop-inspired emo rock far before that genre was particularly profitable.

After putting out a handful of small, independent releases the band signed to Drive-Thru Records in the early ’00s and released now beloved albums like 2002’s Living Well Is The Best Revenge. They followed that with their major-label debut, Forget What You Know, which contained one of the most un-emo sentiments ever on it.

During the song “Is It Me, Is It True?” lanky frontman Gabe Saporta (pictured above with members of New Found Glory) opined, “Sex is old and boring.” Which, presumably, was not true if you weren’t getting any. The band played the Warped Tour multiples times, starting with their initial run in 2000.