There's something magical about that aggressive opening chord of Diablo. It's probably fair to say that no sound was more burned into the minds of late-90s PC gamers than those first few gothic guitar strums.

That music is evocative of late-night looting and hushed duping; of our old friends The Butcher, and his pal King Leoric; of Fallen Ones, and Godly Plates of the Whale, and a peg-legged jerk named Wirt.

But it's also evocative of an entire era, of a time when games were exceeding our expectations in leaps and bounds. A time when the art form was just becoming capable of wonders like online multiplayer and CD-quality sound, but still felt personal, hand-crafted, intimate.

Matt Uelmen is a product of that era. Rather than attempting to mimic a marketable Hollywood ideal, his music is trademarked by live recordings and eclectic instrumentation. He's a humble, multi-talented guy, who can both conjure sound effects out of thin digital air and compose symphonic scores by hand.

I originally set out to run a tribute to the Diablo soundtracks in 2007... Read more

A new Diablo game announcement is almost certainly forthcoming based on a prominent notebook being handed out at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in Paris.

The notebook (pictured left) was just handed out in advance of the event's opening ceremony, and was promptly captured by worldofwar.net. The show's banner image also features Diablo lording over StarCraft II's Kerrigan and Wrath of the Lich King's Arthas.

New Blizzard game announcements have been known to be revealed in the corresponding event's literature, as was the case with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King's announcement at last year's Blizzcon.

Diablo III was strongly rumored to be the announced project at Blizzard's WWI for weeks. A splash image on Blizzard.com has slowly revealed a face that resembles the title villain, with five runes surrounding it in a famililar pentagram formation.

Any details of the presumed Diablo title--including whether it will shift to the MMO genre--are still unknown. The opening ceremony is set to be held at 11:45am Paris time (5:45am EST). Stay tuned for further updates to this story as things get underway.