Time to pull a new question from the mail bin. This time a user on our forums asks:

How does a small-time band like The Sword get a song on Guitar Hero? Does Red Octane solicit bands or do they take submissions?

When Guitar Hero 5 releases on November 1, The Sword’s “Maiden, Mother and Crone” will be one of the songs featured in it. This will be the fourth GH game the band will be included in, following “Freya” on GH2 and Guitar Hero: Greatest Hits and “Black River,” which was chosen by Lars Ulrich for Guitar Hero: Metallica. How did a band like The Sword go from relative obscurity to video game royalty?

“The honest answer is that the [people at Activision] are all metal fans, and all Sword fans in particular,” Kemado Marketing Director/Label Manager Jeffrey Kaye says. “There was very little pitching necessary for them. I have the feeling that’s the case for most of the bands. It’s the same as movies, ads and TV shows. You have major labels who can sway you with their big guns, and then the others are usually picked by [the product's music] supervisors.”