Well, 2006 is here and fight as I could, I couldn't resist the temptation to write an editorial. Actually, if I must come clean, I've been procrastinating writing an editorial for longer than I should have. You know the typical excuses: "I'm too busy at work, I'm too busy around the house, my life is too busy because I'm sooooo important." Well, to hell with all that; I've finally decided to cut through the crap and sit down to write this thing.

So now that I've spent all together too much time explaining how much of a lazy fuck I am, let's get to the business at hand: what's new in the hallowed pantheon of CoC-dom?

The more astute among you will have noticed some changes to our writing corps. We have two brand new writers, which it is my great pleasure to introduce.

First we have Nikola Shahpazov. Nikola currently lives in the smoggy slums of Sofia, Bulgaria, and spends all his waking hours either working on CoC or fantasizing about working on CoC. Nikola's been a long time reader and has already proven to be a great contributor to the magazine.

We've also welcomed Andreas Marouchos on board. Andreas currently hails from the morosely moribund Manchester, England, but is originally from Cyprus. Andreas fills his days toiling slavishly to cover all the bands you enjoy reading about in CoC and never complaining about it.

In all seriousness though, these guys have proven to be great additions to the CoC team and we're looking forward to their continued successful contributions (and I'm sure their respective home towns are lovely).

With all good news comes sad news, and unfortunately I must report on several departures from our roster. Xander Hoose, Alvin Wee, David Rocher and Adam Lineker have all decided, at various points over the past several months, that it was time to hang up their CoC quills.

All of them will be missed in our pages. We have seen great things from these writers at one time or another in the past, and unfortunately, as is always the case, other commitments in their lives have caught up with them and the tough decision to leave CoC had to be made.

This being 2006, it is high time for our beloved "CoC Best Album of {insert year here}" article to rear its glorious fangs. You will find some real surprises for 2005 this time around, as well as some obvious omissions. What can I say -- no one is perfect, but if you're like me, you'll find it infinitely interesting how different other people's tastes can be. And of course, these lists always make it easy to identify which writers you should listen to when making your album purchasing decisions.

Ok, my rant is over. As always, thank you for your support, and enjoy the upcoming year of CoC.