Here are a couple of updates.

• Aaron Melnick himself shot me an email a few weeks ago. It seems that those In Cold Blood tracks are so obscure that even he didn't have a copy of 'em!? You can check out some of what he's up to now at the Non-Commercial Records website. He's currently playing guitar in the Wolfdowners and drumming in Brainwashed Youth, though it also seems that a few of his older punk related projects like Cider and the Inmates are still kicking around to some degree as well. You can check out new and/or rare mp3's from all of these bands and then some right here.

• 3/4 of the former members of Chinchilla emailed me right quick. They've all been involved with little projects here and there, but nothing too "official", as far as being core members in new bands or what have you. They've all three contributed to various outings from Maquiladora in some form or another, and the website has several mp3's, so that's worth a curious listen.

• An old friend of Steve Post's, Realm's afuckingmazing bassist, let me know that he's currently in a band called Zebulon Pike, and judging from the mp3 samples on the site their CD is fucking excellent. I haven't ordered it yet, but I'm gonna get my hands on it soon enough! They call themselves "instrumental prog-doom metal", and that's about right. I'm blown away that I haven't heard anything about them yet, to be quite honest. Check that shit out. There's also a currently succint Realm website being run by the band, so hopefully they'll throw some cool tidbits up in the future.

• I got the Black Noise Cannon CD in the mail yesterday. I'm not going to review it on the main site because contrary to what the label's website insinuated the CD came out back in 2003, but I can definitely state that Christdriver fans should look into it. (Edit: The band contacted me to let me know that the CD was dated 2003 since it was actually completed in demo form at that time, but the CD release itself was in fact a recent occurence in 2005, so I'm going to give it a proper review soon.) The songs are more drawn out and repetitious than Christdriver, not to mention dealing more with lengthy experimental noise passages. Good stuff, though.

To my absolutely crippling dismay (though no surprise), no one was able to utter a peep about either Struggle Within or the Rainmen, so... fuck, if anyone has any clue about those bands... please hit me the fuck up! I'm dying to know! Oh, and if anyone has a copy of the Merauder demo with Eddie Sutton doing the vocals for some of the "Five Deadly Venoms" songs, you need to hit me the fuck up as well. Same goes for anyone that has Biohazard's infamous debut demo. I'm not payin' $30+ bucks for that shit on eBay, but if I can get my hands on any of this stuff I can post it here for others to enjoy as well. So come on, help a brother out!