The following correspondance took place earlier this month between Pastepunk and DIVIDE BY ZERO bassist John Contreras. Much thanks to John for going out of his way for the update! DIVIDE BY ZERO’s Answer To No One was released in 2005 on Jump Start Records. Songs from the record are still available to stream.

Pastepunk: The question we’re all wondering: Is DIVIDE BY ZERO still a band? If yes, would you consider yourselves an active band?

John: Kinda. In the hearts of each of us, we’ll always be a part of DIVIDE BY ZERO. There have been drunken text messages and midnight emails between us that talk about playing again but our schedules are pretty hard to work around. I would say for the time being that we’re kind of a band but definitely not an active one.

Pastepunk: So what does the new year hold for DIVIDE BY ZERO? Can we expect any new music or touring?

John: For DIVIDE BY ZERO, the new year doesn‚Äôt have any plans laid out. As for the members of DIVIDE BY ZERO it will probably be busy. Some of us are in grad school, some of us want to be. Some of us are working full time, some of us want to be. Some of us are touring full time, and yes, some of us want to be. Since we‚Äôre all on something different, you can expect new music and touring from TJ/SPITALFIELD as well as Mike/THE APLHA COUPLE, but if you expect new music or touring from DIVIDE BY ZERO, you might be disappointed. In all honesty, we’d like to put some new stuff out there…at least the songs that hadn’t been recorded when we stopped playing…but we’re all spread out across the country so that’s not really possible right now. Never say never, though.

From the inbox:

Deep Elm and Burning Heart Records are pleased to debut the new SOUNDS LIKE VIOLENCE video for

“Glad I‚Äôm Losing You”, the first single from the band’s full-length With Blood On My Hands.

SEE the VIDEO here: www.deepelm.com/video/

The video was directed by Jon Eriksson at Lemurbolaget. SOUNDS LIKE VIOLENCE’sWith Blood On My Hands is available in stores now from Deep Elm in North America and from Burning Heart in Europe.

Northern California’s CHANGING FACE are the first band signed to the nascent Escapist Records, a label started by one of the people running Scenepointblank.com. These young fellas scratch, claw, and floorpunch their way through seven meaty songs on this debut EP, delivering a solid, though highly familiar, outing of mosh-intensive shouted/screamed hardcore. What CHANGING FACE [...]

The title says it all, but in the interest of filling in this “news goes here text box,” the press release I got on this announcement includes the following nugget:

“We are psyched to be part of the ‘Punk Goes Acoustic 2′ Compilation,” says vocalist Jordan Brown from Set Your Goals.

Well, I’m glad we cleared that up! Here’s to hoping SET YOUR GOALS provides an acoustic version of “Echoes.”

From the inbox:

Relapse Records is proud to announce the signing Glasgow, Scotland’s MAN MUST DIE.

MAN MUST DIE (Joe McGlynn – vocals, Alan McFarland – guitars, John Lee – drums, and Danny McNab – bass), the first U.K.-based band to be signed to the label, are currently putting the finishing touches on their Relapse debut The Human Condition which is expected to see its release in early summer. The band recorded The Human Condition with producer Jean Francois Dagenais (MISERY INDEX, KATKLYSM, MALEVOLENT CREATION) at Studio Victor and JFD Studios in Canada.

“I don’t think words could describe how delighted we are to be apart of the Relapse family,” McFarland comments, “growing up listening to Relapse artists and dreaming of one day being on the roster, and here we are. I fully believe that Relapse is the perfect match for MMD.” On The Human Condition, McFarland also states: “These 11 new tracks represent what we are about now. Our song writing has gotten stronger and we feel the songs on this CD are without a doubt the best MMD have created to date.”

MAN MUST DIE formed in 2002 and has toured extensively throughout the United Kingdom with the likes of FEAR FACTORY, CEPHALIC CARNAGE, DYING FETUS, SUFFOCATION, KATAKLYSM and more.

Additional information and music can be found via the band’s official MySpace: myspace.com/manmustdie and web page: manmustdie.net

Via MySpace Bulletin:

On our MySpace is our newest venture into the digital world, the first ever NPR digital sampler called “It’s A Negative Progression Summer All Year Long!”

It has 17 FREE mp3s, one from each of our releases, just one click and you download them all.

Also, we are dramatically lowering our mailorder prices beginning March 1 on negativeprogression.com. In a few days all of our full lengths will be $9.99 and EPs will be $5.99! These prices can’t be beat, if you have always wanted to own some of our CDs but have slacked, now is the time!

The second Victory album for Chicago’s THE TOSSERS, is slated to hit stores on March 20, 2007. In support of the disc, the label has launched an e-card. Agony is the follow-up to the band’s 2005 disc The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death.

link: TOSSERS E-card

- Weird. I don’t think I’ve heard the word “e-card” in quite a while…

Our friend Virgil of Suburban Home Records recently posted a lengthy update on the future status of his record label, his online CD store, and his online vinyl shop at his IndieHQ.com blog. Below is a snippet of the posting:

As word spreads about things phasing down at Suburban Home, I figured that there might be people who would think that Suburban Home was about to close shop. One reason I wanted to write this rather lengthy explanation of the circumstances around Suburban Home was to clarify what is going on. Suburban Home has no plans to close up shop. We plan to continue to release records by bands we love, and we actually have a few new artists working on releases for us right now that we will soon announce. The move from our office to my house, and the unfortunate decision to cut staff, will help Suburban Home to survive financial disaster. We will be phasing out Dead Format all together as we are having the hardest time trying to sell CDs.

Over the next couple of months, we will be making the transition for yet another move. That will mean a lot of crazy sales, giveaways, a garage sale, and eventually packing. If there is anything you can do to help us throughout all of this, please consider picking up one of our many lot sales. If we can sell enough of them, that will make our move that much easier. And if there is anything I hope that people take away from all of this, if there is a band or a label that you love, please consider purchasing a CD or digital album and consider doing so through independent channels. The price of free music (file-sharing and copying) has a much bigger cost than you might think. I am sure we are not the only label struggling in an industry attempting to sell products people actively get for free.

For the entire post, please visit Indie HQ. Among Suburban Home’s recent releases are the latest LOVE ME DESTROYER album, the TIM BARRY solo disc, and the re-issue of DRAG THE RIVER’s Closed.

MORE: I (Jordan) sent some follow-up questions to Virgil after reading his announcement today.

Pastepunk: How will this affect your distributed labels, if at all?

Virgil: It won’t affect it much. We will still work with the handful of labels that we work with and as far as the ones that are actually active, there are only a few. Much of the work on the distribution side of things are handled by Navarre. I will continue to work with those labels and not much will change. We have no plans to pick up new labels though.

Pastepunk: In terms of an online store to sell SH releases on CD, will that exist or will that be left to the Interpunks, and various digital outlets? Will there just be a Suburban Home online store?

Virgil: I love dealing directly with the fans of our music and as much as Interpunk is a great partner for us, we want to be offer the lowest price for someone who wants to buy a CD or LP directly. What will most likely happen is some sort of Suburban Home / Vinyl Collective store. I love mailorder and hope to be able to keep up with mailorder for as long as I run the company. I would not trade the personal connection with fans for anything.

Pastepunk: Where the hell are you going to store everything in your “suburban home?”

Virgil: We have one storage space because we moved into an office with less storage space. We have a really big crawl space (that you can stand up in) and that will store more of the CDs. One reason we are having these crazy sales like the 25 cds for 25 dollars and so on is to clear out boxes so that there are less things to move.