I’m tired, folks. I don’t know how else to put it. I mean, yeah, the last few months have been a bit hectic, with curating and installing multiple gallery exhibits, co-organizing a comic book festival, editing and publishing a new anthology comic, doing the usual writing, social media-ing and illustrating to keep food on the table, and training for a half-marathon for which I haven’t even registered yet. But to push myself just one step further over the edge, my band and I inexplicably agreed to schedule the release of our new album, Unknown, for this week.

I still owe you the second part of the history of As Yet Unbroken (part eight of the cumbersome but mildly informative “Magical Musical Mystery Tour“), but I can comfortably jump ahead  to the last six months without spoiling anything: Basically, we’ve been flying as a trio — the core of singer Tim Beck, bassist Mark Zeilman, and me — since last fall, when guitarist Peter Stauber left. We decided to use that to our advantage, by really focusing on just writing and recording (with Mark and I splitting guitar duties on record). We did play one gig in the spring with former guitarist Rick Espe, but he wasn’t interested in re-joining long-term (but we still love ya, Rick!). We did finally finish recording about 10 songs (well, really nine songs, one track was from recording sessions with Rick almost three years ago) at the beginning of the summer, and after going through mastering, sequencing, package design and internal logistical debates, we finally have something approximating a new CD for you to enjoy:

The last few weeks have been spent sending out press releases, newsletters, radio packages, and media kits, and basically scrambling somewhat to regain the traction we lost by being relatively inactive for almost a year. And now we’re in the process of carefully auditioning musicians to fill that fourth position in the band so we can actually bring this album LIVE to the masses again, assuming the masses want it (at least one or two of you do).

Until then, however, if you’re looking to pick up some new rock music, you could do worse than to buy/download/steal Unknown. It’s a pretty decent document of As Yet Unbroken’s existence up to now, featuring new takes on some of our oldest songs, and brand-new stuff we haven’t even played live yet (i.e., no one has heard). And you get to hear how equally bad I am at drums AND guitar, which is always impressive. You can get the full digital album for about $5 at Bandcamp or Amazon MP3; it’s on iTunes, but the whole album will cost you about $10. Or, if you’re one of those CD collectors, we have those for sale for only $5 too.

If you want to just buy individual songs, my personal favorites are “Post-Life Society” (in which I sneak some chilling synths), “Bad Blood” (think Alice In Chains’ “Rooster” with less war imagery), “Wasted Time” (pretty much our most radio-friendly song ever), or “Pseudo Angel” (it’s an oldie, but this new version is pretty rawkin’).

Hopefully, we’ll have a new line-up nailed down by the end of the month, and possibly even play a CD release show before the end of 2011. But that’s only if you want it, of course.