Metallica, Placebo and The Pussycat Dolls are “live in your living room” for this Xbox 360 online event running 1-4 May on Xbox LIVE.

Early this week we gave heads up of Microsoft’s May Bank Holiday ‘free Xbox LIVE for everyone’ promotion. Today we’d like to tell you more because it’s looking exciting, especially for music fans with a thing for heavy metal.

The basic premise of Xtival Spring 2009 is to encourage Silver subscribers, currently paying nothing, to see what they’re missing on the fee-based Gold service – most notably online gaming and the freedom to voice and / or video chat across Xbox LIVE. However the underlying message is also that Xbox LIVE offers much more than just games, it’s now a film rental and music video download service boasting some genuinely hot exclusives.

And so this year Microsoft has introduced full-length rock concerts to Xtival charged at 600 Microsoft points for standard definition and 800 for HD. These will include clips from the South by South West festival in Texas and classic performances from the likes of Queen and Franz Ferdinand. You’ll also have access to ‘MSN Xclusives’ content usually only available via PC, to include performances and behind the scenes video of The Pussycat Dolls, The Saturdays and a truckload of heavy metal from rock magazine Kerrang! – Fightstar and You Me at Six are listed among 25 acts.

Film content being made available especially for Xtival is impressive too, with high-definition rentals of The Dark Knight, Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Standard fees apply but behind-the-scenes and other extras are freebies.

Games-wise, because that’s we’re here for, there are competition prizes for people playing Call of Duty and LIPS, the latter boasts the rather incredible prize of Crystallized Swarovski Elements wireless microphones whereas one lucky COD fand could be jetting off to Los Angeles for an all-exes paid trip to meet the team.

More info is available here: www.xbox.com/xtival. Worth checking out if you're online with Xbox 360.