It feels like only the blink of an eye, but it has been a full four months since the 12th of August and CoC's 15th anniversary. I want to apologize for not writing a more timely editorial thanking our loyal readership. I know that there are still a great many of our original readers that remain with us after these 15 years. I can say this with confidence since I've heard from quite a few of you lately.

During the summer months, we experienced one of the first and most severe service interruptions in our history. For almost a month our database was stuck at its May 2010 state and new articles were not being published. After a lengthy battle with our ISP, we managed to recover the lost data (with much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, mind you).

Coinciding with this interruption in service we had a major lull in terms of output from our staff. It seemed as if this summer was the perfect storm of disincentive: broken site, busy lives and lack of motivation made for some hard times here at CoC, culminating in the recent departure of two of our most prolific writers in all of our 15 years: Jackie Smit and Quentin Kalis.

Clearly, a reorganizing and regrouping of effort was in order and over the past few weeks Pedro and I have taken it upon ourselves to re-energize our staff and ensure that our technical difficulties are a thing of the past.

We have now completed the migration of our site to a new ISP that promises to be much more solid, robust and responsive to any issues that arise.

On the staff front, I had a private discussion with everyone about their future with the magazine. It was time for us to be honest with ourselves and to either commit to Chronicles of Chaos or bid it adieu. This resulted in the inevitable departure some of the less active staff members, but also the surprise retirement of Jeremy Ulrey whose prolific pen will be missed.

The bulk of the staff, however, is fully on board and they've all recommitted themselves to the cause of quality metal journalism that CoC has been the standard bearer of for all these years; not for the promise of remuneration, not for the fame and glory and chance at a Pulitzer, but simply for the love of the music and a penchant for ink and quill.

In the midst of all this change, I'm also proud to announce the arrival of a couple of Neophytes to the staff: Jonathan Carbon and St. John Satansson. Jonathan joins us after having written for a few indie rock websites at which he was tired of constantly having to explain what the difference was between death and black metal -- in each and every review! Suffice it to say that he is chuffed to be joining an outfit such as ours and he'll be striving to not only maintain but constantly improve the level of discourse on our site. Satansson is a more enigmatic figure whose history is less clear, but whose penchant for demo review will clearly fill a need here.

If you also think you have what it takes to join our ranks, feel free to fill out an audition form on our contact page. Be prepared with samples of your best work and for a serious level of interrogation; pulling teeth sans anesthesia has been said to be more enjoyable than applying for a job at CoC.

So here we are, having weathered the perfect storm, we're coming out no worse for wear. At the end of the day, we keep on with this little zine of ours for all of you (but mostly for ourselves, 'cause we're vain like that). Cheers to you all.