Finally, it's Friday. We've got just one more week left in July, and then it'll be August already. Boy, did this summer coast by! Maybe that's because we here at Noisecreep have been working hard all summer, to bring you all the latest heavy metal and hard rock news as well as some of the best band interviews around. And we've got more coming down the pike next week. Come back on Monday, because next week, we'll have new interviews with Poison the Well, Vision of Disorder, Between the Buried and Me, Caliban, Most Precious Blood and more. For now, it's White Noise, keeping you brutal.

+ So, RollingStone.com is reporting that Eddie Van Halen is recovering from surgery, designed to treat increasing pain in his left hand. "During the last leg of our tour, I started developing pain in my thumb and my pinky. I didn't think much of it at the time," the Van Halen guitarist says. "It got progressively worse to the point that about three months ago I wasn't able to play at all. My pinky and my thumb were totally locked up and felt like there was something broken." Van Halen was being treated by specialists in Düsseldorf, Germany, for arthritis, but later on, doctors found a bone spur, twisted tendon and a cyst in the joint of his left thumb, which the surgery sought to correct.

+ If you're a Dark Tranquility fan, we've got some bad news. The band's new DVD/CD, called 'Where Death Is Most Alive,' will be out on October 26, but only in Europe. The DVD contains footage of the band's Halloween show last fall in Milan, Italy. The good news is, the band will enter a studio this fall to start tracking their new album, which will be in stores in early 2010. Tentative track titles include 'I Am The Void,' 'Zero Distance,' 'The Burden of Love Alive,' 'Archangelsk' and 'Memories In Reverse.'

+ Marduk keep revealing more and more about their new disc, 'Wormwood,' which will be in stores in September. The album will contain 10 songs, including 'Funeral Dawn,' 'Into Utter Madness' and 'Whorecrown.'

+ If you thought all the Anthrax drama this week has been bad, you must have forgotten about Fear Factory's tension. In a recent interview, Fear Factory guitarist Christian Olde Wolbers says he and drummer Raymond Herrera are "both equal shareholders of the Fear Factory name," despite claims from Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares that the name is theirs. The latter's plans to regroup as Fear Factory, Wolbers says, will be challenged, "until everything legally gets resolved on who can do what with the name and tour under what entity we have no idea until our lawyers come to an agreement."

+ Four new official Dream Theater bootlegs have been released through Ytsejam Records. 'The Making of Falling Into Infinity,' 'Train Of Thought Instrumental Demos 2003,' 'Uncovered 2003-2005,' and 'Santiago, Chile 12/6/05' are now available, so go get 'em.

+ Who are the Top Ten Death Metal Bands of All Time? Our friends at the AOL Radio Blog offered up their picks ... do you agree or disagree? Who do you think should have made the list?

+ Nihill will release their debut LP, 'Krach,' the first part of a trilogy "from a band that may be unknown to many, but have been preparing themselves for a long time before they finalized their dark arts and have it exposed to the world." Described as a grim mixture of Sunn O))) and Deathspell Omega, the album contains six parts, including 'Mundus Subterreanus,' 'Dreams Upon the Scaffold' and 'Gnosis Part II.'

+ It Dies Today, Vanna, and Arsonists Get All The Girls will be teaming up for a U.S. tour in September, which kicks off in Worcester, Mass., on September 10. Dates run through October 17 in Toronto, Calif.

+ Baroness have released more information about their upcoming album, which will boast 12 songs, including 'Bullhead's Psalm,' 'The Sweetest Curse' and 'Steel That Sleeps the Eye.'

+ Dethklok, the band from Adult Swim's 'Metalocalypse: Dethklok' series, will be getting their own video game this fall. Konami will be unleashing 'Metalocalypse: Dethgame' as a download for the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Networks. Series creator Brendon Small predicts it will be the "most successful downloadable cartoon death metal game in recorded history."

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