From Kellys update on myspace:

Were doing a cover of YYZ on the new Atheist record we are going to record a blazing cover of the brilliant YYZ from Rush, as you all know we have long been fans of rush, and we know this cover is a bit outside the box of what most metal bands do, but then again as a band we are very outside the box of what most metal bands do. And i can confirm that it will fucking destroy, and when people hear flynn/s version of this tune....He renders me speechless, he has always claimed Neil Peart as a major influence, and so it makes perfect sense to cover this amazing piece of music. i thought I would share that with you, along with the fact that we are working hard on compiling the riffs that will soon set the technical metal world on their asses. We will not rest till we have made the record that we and you all hope for when listening to technical metal, it will be a punishing, brutal display of all we have to give..... rest assured there will not be one stitch of vaginal metal on this motherfucker! and then in 2009 were coming for your brains fuckers! Horns to the motherfucking sky! Atheist 2009!

From the MDF forum:
Full list of confirmed bands is below. More announcements should be ready to go in the next few days.

Asphyx (Netherlands)
Immolation (New York)
Brutal Truth (New York)
Atheist (Florida)
Abscess (California)
Hail of Bullets (Netherlands)
Today is the Day (Tennessee)
Flesh Parade (Louisiana)
Jig-Ai (Czech Republic)
Gnostic (Georgia)
Crowpath (Sweden)
Entrails Massacre (Germany)
Antigama (Poland)
Man Must Die (Scotland)

Alright, it's been a while, I've been out of the loop, busy with work, but great news folks, Atheist is preping to record some new material... for some of you this is old news, but it's new here on the site. From the horses mouth:

YOU ASKED FOR IT>>The first new Atheist music in over 15 years has risen to the surface and it was truly amazing, much better than we could have expected! We ended up with a bit over 3 minutes of truly Atheist, brutal , fast as hell, technical metal madness!!!!

My trip to atlanta began in true atheist "cursed" style. I enter Avatar rehearsal studios and with guitar and backpack in hand , I proceed to bust my fucking ass...like really bust ass and fucked up my knee, shit i have not fallen like that in years hahaha So i hobbled to the practice room, and plugged in my guitar.. knee bleeding and all, and of course...my guitar does not work!!! Most of you know I am left handed so... I could not play anyone elses guitar SO..... friday was a wash, i did however get to watch Gnostic rehearse and that was incredible, you all are in for a treat when that record comes out. Fortunately for me the gnostic boys enlisted one of there buddies "Rick" to perform some guitar surgery, and i am very grateful to him for that cause we would not had been able to write anything had he not fixed that fucker up for the next day so everyone say...RIGHT ON RICKY BOY!!!

Sat , i get my guitar back and it's perfect and from about the 6th minute of jamming(after smoking out) the new Atheist riffs started surfacing off my brain and flynn's brain, and just like old times we were rolling, smiling ear to ear all the while. i have not written with steve flynn since 1991...so we did not know how it would be, but people it was fucking magical, and inspiring, me and flynn used to always do most all of the arrangements for the Atheist music, and so once we started spitting riffs, we started sewing together what will be the first new Atheist material in many moons. We are thrilled to death(pun intended) to say that I will indeed be eating my words about not doing new material, but i want old fans to know how serious we are about this, we are not making a record again for any reasons but the right ones, sure we all need to take care of our families, but our intensions are to rip a brand new hole in the ass of technical metal, and raise the bar of expectations on the fusion of death metal, and progressive musical mind blowing. We hope that people will understand that this is truly for all the right reasons. i do expect old school metal people to be skeptical, and my words to you are DON'T WORRY! WE AINT ABOUT TO FUCK THIS UP!

Steve Flynn is one of the most musically articulate, motherfucking monster drummers alive on this planet...if his performance level on Unquestionable Presence was a 9 or a 10 then he is now gonna be on 20, he is faster, smarter and more creative than i have ever seen him be, and I have known him for over 25 years. i just stand in awe of his ability to manipulate rhythms, it's such a signature style that he makes it very easy for me to drop brutal riffs and NEVER lose sight on the heaviness that seperates us from that sort of " epic , finesse orientated technical metal you hear from a lot of todays tech bands. We want to confuse you, then punch you in the back of the head at the same time before your brain has time to do anything about it!! What do i need to say about the skills of Tony Choy, he was masterful at piecing the ELEMENTS bass and drum sections together so he will no doubt be laying down some dizzying shit fo sho!

We know more than any writers, or others, who think they know whats best for us, and we hope everyone will not choose to be negative about all of this, life is to short to worry about shit like that.... ask our good friend the late great Roger Patterson about borrowed time!! We will not sleep till we have created the Theory of Technical Evolution! Me and Flynn discussed this sort of "Einstien" scenario, whereas Einstien was never the brightest or smartest amongst his peers, but he was extremely creative and clever, and i think that combining the technical knowledge of this metal we play, with cleverness and creativity will trump the equation's of the many bands of today who may have more complicated scales and within their tunes, and maybe are more technical than Atheist, but lack the ability to put it together in a brutal and creative manner , so that people can actually still count on us not losing sight of the latter half of the definition as it's written of our sound DEATH METAL!

With that said we ALSO intend on celebrating the 20th anniversary of Piece of Time release with a bunch of shows in 2009 in Europe and the U.S., A live dvd and now a brand new set of Atheist's metal puzzles for your confusing enjoyment of course. We will keep you posted on all of the details as they happen. Hold on to your brains fuckers! PROMOTERS AND LABELS CONTACT starrfactory@verizon.net to book shows or show interest in helping us take the record to the people who made us! We thank you all so much for making this happen for us, we totally could not do this without your endless urging to DO ANOTHER RECORD! No longer can we ignore the masses of young metal heads just getting into our music for the first time, we never could have imagined it would happen that way, but once it was realised after the Helfest gig in france last summer....we knew we had to consider it. Ok thats it for now, talk to you all soon Cheers Kelly

Sorry for the downtime folks, but now the site is back online thanks to the folks at Primerelay you should now be seeing this via the officialatheist.com URL instead of the old unheardonline.com site. If you find anything broken, please report it to the webmaster.

Now Available on the Relapse shop all three Atheist masterpieces in limited edition picture discs! The run is limited to 1000 pieces so get over there and order yours now, before they're all gone!

The band have discovered the following FAKE merch site... they are not selling Official merch, DO NOT buy from this website: www.atheistmerchandise .netfirms.com
(and no, I'm not hyperlinking it...) If you're looking for official merch, check the merchdirect link below or head over to the relapse shop!

Kelly has just updated me with this new link to buy shirts, (go get yours now!):

Also, the band is looking for someone to take care of the merch, get in contact with Kelly for details if you're available...

In case you didn't already know, Atheist will be playing The Live Metal Club in Bucharest, Romania on June 21, 2007.

There is also the (date yet to be confirmed) FINAL! Atheist show in NYC... this will be filmed for a DVD There will be no others! This is your last chance! (and you get to be on the DVD you lucky bastards!) Make sure you go show your appreciation! More info on this as soon as it flows down the pipeline...

Also Mark dropped us an email to say theres a new interview with Kelly online over at http://www.metal-discovery.com Here are some direct links for those of you that are lazy: [ Part 1 ] & [ Part 2 ]

Zer0 from the forum sent me this [ rarfile ] full of various types of Atheist tabs spanning all three albums. Sorry, I'm not going to sort them and tell you which is good or bad, figure it out for yourself! (that and it's easier to just download one file isn't it!)

Kelly passed me this photo of Laurent's new tattoo... now that's dedication! (and it looks pretty cool too!) click the thumbnail for a larger version....

Kelly just let me know all the leftover shirts from the summer tour are all gone... congrats to all of you that took advantage of a second chance to get yours!

I recently added the Powerfest date to the live page...

Meanwhile I got word that the guys over on http://www.the-suffering.cz/ have added the interview conducted with Kelly during the Czech Republic Gig

Atheist "Unquestionable Presence" European tour shirts are now for sale on kelly's site, but there are only about 40 left (XL size ONLY). These are sure to be collectors items with euro dates on the back and high quality print of the U.P. album cover on the front. Get them while you can. Paypal honored.

If you need more details or have questions send them here

I've just added the first couple of shows to be annouced for 2007 to the live dates section, they are Los Angeles Murderfest Version 3.0 on March 24-25th and Hellfest 2007 (France) on June 22-24th.

An interesting article about tech death metal, check it out here: tech death article

An interview with Steve & Kelly is taken from a 1998 issue of Snakepit Magazine, and was provided by Laurent Ramadier (the author) check it out here: Snakepit Magazine Interview

Dimitri Borellini has sent in a selection of photos from Evolution Fest 2006, check them out here: Evolution Fest Photos by Dimitri

My photos from Bloodstock are also online here now - Bloodstock Open Air Photos by Micah Johnson

There are also a selection of Evolution Fest pics over on Holymetal.com

Also you can check out some streaming video of Atheist at Wacken Open Air 2006 here: http://streaming.wacken.com/content.html the Atheist footage starts at about 16min30...