MUDVAYNE: 'The New Game' Lands At Billboard's No. 15

MUDVAYNE's fourth studio album, "The New Game", sold 48,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 15 on The Billboard 200 chart. This is less than one third of the opening tally registered by its predecessor, "Lost and Found", which premiered with 152,000 units back in April 2005 to land at No. 2.

"The New Game" follows an extended period in which MUDVAYNE recorded two full albums of new material, while singer Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett also went off to record and tour with the band HELLYEAH. But Gray told The Pulse of Radio that all the hard work paid off in MUDVAYNE's most mature album yet. "I really think that your music kind of comes from where you're at, you know, in life, and I think that, you know, every record we learn a little more about each other," he said. "It's not easier to write songs for us, but it is easier to write songs for us. We understand each other better. Where it used to take us a lot longer to kind of figure it out, we're a little quicker now to be able to kind of realize the direction that we're going in."

MUDVAYNE recently launched a new interactive mystery contest as a tie-in to "The New Game" that begins with fans finding items inside the album packaging necessary to play.

Among those will be a unique code number with which to register at Mudvayne.com, 11 mugshot photos of different "suspects," and a back story for each suspect and their situation. The ongoing mystery will also involve clues in the band's lyrics, knowledge of MUDVAYNE's history, and further hints in the video for their current single, "Do What You Do".

The video for "Do What You Do" (see below) premiered last week on MTV and MTV2.

MUDVAYNE is currently on the road to promote the arrival of "The New Game" through December 20.