It pains me to say it, but James Goetz will be leaving the band in June. James has been playing with us since 2003, which makes him the drummer with by far the longest tenure in the band. Everything is amicable – James and his family will be leaving the area – and wherever he ends up, some band will get a hell of a drummer.

So it is with a heavy heart that I wish my friend and bandmate well, and begin the search for a replacement. In the meantime, you can catch James’ last two shows with us on May 24th (with fellow Nighmare alumni Dark Empire and A Sound of Thunder) and June 15th (with Axenstar, Trihexyn and Burning Shadows).

Interested drummers can get in touch at info@division-usa.com.

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Yeah, that didn’t exactly go as planned. Dan and Scott were completely out of the music scene after their original departures. Neither had been in any sort of band, and in fact Dan hadn’t played much at all during his absence. It was a surprise to all three of us (James, Dave and I) how well both did in their auditions when we took that into account. We assumed it would be pretty easy to iron things out and get back out playing, oh, say in August.

Well, you can probably see this coming – while both of them have worked very hard, the combination of crazy summer scheduling and working through the bumps of two talented people learning how to be in a band again delayed our re-emergence a bit more than we would have liked. To paraphrase a great frontman I saw recently, we regret this – but we are back now.

You can catch the first two of many shows to come on either Sep. 29th at the Sunset Lounge in Hagerstown, MD (with Doom Syndicate, Cammo Shorts and Heimdall), or on our return to Monthly Metal at Balls Bluff in Leesburg on Oct. 6th, with our brothers in metal Pharaoh in a rare U.S. show, as well as Trihexyn and Death Penalty. Details can be found on our shows page.

In the spirit of The Old School, we’ve also decided to re-release 1998′s “Ascension to Eternity”, our long-out-of-print second album (and the last one to feature both Dan and Scott) via Bandcamp’s “Name Your Price” option. You can get it free – which we’re fine with – or you can pay what you think it’s worth, here. Enjoy it, and hopefully this whets your appetite for the new music coming towards the end of the year. We’ll be featuring several songs from this one live (along with the “Trinity” and “Control Issues” material, of course). This album contains some of my personal favorites from the Division catalog, and I’m looking forward to dusting some of them off and showcasing them again.

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Division joins Doom Syndicate, Cammo Shorts, Survive the Demise, Torture Therapy and Heimdall for a night of furious regional metal in Hagerstown. 8PM, 21+, price TBA.

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But can you explain who influences what in you playingsingingdrummingwhatever?

Me,  I’ll divide it as best I can:

Power:

• Ronnie James Dio.  He had a truly commanding voice it made you listen, yet with exceptional         control  and emotion
• Bruce Dickenson:, “The Human Air Raid Siren” ‘nuff said
• Matt Barlow: Dio’s diametric opposite, where Dio has this command and control over his voice, Matt is the wild raging storm, full of raw passion and emotion. When he sings it’s from the heart and soul a voice that can bring you to tears one minute and tear your head off the next.

Presence:

• Dio again, going back to that commanding quality.
• Rob Halford, You can tell it’s him at the first note.
• Geoff Tate, again like Halford there is no mistaking that voice,

Emotion:

• Warrel Dane,  he tells a story with his voice in every song, listen to “The Obsidian Conspiracy”  he runs the gamut from mourning to pure unbridled hate and never misses a note.
• Geoff Tate, “Gonna Get Close  to You” is one of the creepiest songs I’ve ever heard, and Tate nails it.

Range: lets call this “the range I want (or wish I had)”

• Midnight (RIP),  Crimson Glory’s enigmatic front man, regularly danced in the middle to high soprano range.. I’ve hit the high notes in “Azrael” exactly once.
• Eric Knudson (Eric AK),  Flotsam and Jetsam’s resident screamer.. “Doomsday for the Deceiver” is another song that I would love to be able to hit consistently.
• Rob Halford, I think he may have the widest useable range of any singer in heavy metal.
• Chuck Billy, probably the lowest unaided (no pitch shifting) voice in metal.  Chuck has a lot of power in his bass/baritone range and it rumbles in like an earthquake  (“PREACH!!!!!”)

Diction/Pronunciation:

• Listen to anything by Crimson Glory or Queensryche and you’ll hear it

I’m sure there’s more, if you’ve heard me sing and think I’m dead on or way off, lemme know

Discuss

Sas

— Division is coming, prepare for war.

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There were some attempts to get something going, but the chemistry was never there: Chemistry, it’s the reason Division works and has worked for as long as it has. So I moved into other things..

I had always stayed in contact with Mike, I got to know Dave and James over time I have known Nick nearly as long as I’ve known Mike. and knew that Division was in good hands. Meanwhile my life took me in a couple of different directions, I achieved my Black Belt in Taekwondo, competed in the same for about seven years. I became one of small group of Adobe Certified ColdFusion Developers, most importantly I became the father to a beautiful blue eyed blonde haired little girl name Mackenna (yes.. you can be Metal and still gush over your kids).

I also was diagnosed with acute Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, this had been with me my entire life and had shaped much of it..

..and I had moved to Raleigh, NC.

Cut to fall of 2011, One divorce, second wife, one kid and one convoluted move back to the DMV. I get an email from Mike… “Nick is leaving”, “How would you feel about auditioning?” I had really thought Nick was in it till the end and honestly I was a little unsure, because I hadn’t done ANYTHING band wise in a very long time. Mike added, “This is not a walk – in, you’ve got competition bring your A-Game”. Two auditions later (the first one suuuckkked.. never try to be something your not) and here I am.I have come back to a band that is more mature, and focused than ever.. this may very well be Division’s strongest lineup.

For those that are the “Nick” era contingent, I am the voice on the first two Division releases: “Paradise Lost” and “Ascension to Eternity”. I am a traditional Metal vocalist in the Rob Halford, Geoff Tate, Ronnie James Dio tradition. I will try my best to do right by Nick’s legacy with Control Issues, but still making them my own. The Trinity material is a different story, much of that was written while I was still in the band, so you may here some very different takes on it.
What does the future hold? Division is focused on one thing… being the best..
Our new material is raw, angry and very “in your face” without sacrificing the high standards that we set for ourselves..
Division is coming.. prepare for war..
… Scott

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My friends in high school used to tell me that this is a “bummer of a way to look at life, dude”, but I’ve never thought so. I’ve always interpreted it as a positive – no matter what upheaval you go through, at the end of the day, you’ll go back to the things that anchor you to who you are in life.

As usual, this is pretty relevant to Division. In this case, the return of Scott as our vocalist was the catalyst for a conversation that, quite frankly, surprised the crap out of me. The culmination of that conversation is as big of a surprise to me as it will be to some of you:

Division would like to announce the return of Dan Plunkett as our bassist. Dan was originally with us from 1997 through 2005, and he appears on the “Ascension to Eternity” and “Trinity” CDs. He left for health reasons, and as those issues are behind him now, we’re glad to have him back. We should be debuting the new band configuration at shows this summer, and have some new music downloadable for you, as well.

Of course, this just adds to the conundrum we’ve been facing since Scott’s return – who actually is the “new guy”. This is more important than you think, since the “new guy” is the one that traditionally gets all the verbal harassment at rehearsal…

I guess I’ll just have to harass them all!

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Musicians suck more than ever as people.

Seriously. I know we do this out of passion (after all, it’s not like there’s any money in it), but apparently courtesy and even something resembling a sense of obligation don’t exist in this community anymore. Nearly two-thirds of the people we sent audition materials to simply stopped answering emails, without a word. All you need is a simple “Hey, I checked it out, and it’s not working for me.” (Yes, I know this is actually eliminating people I don’t want to work with, but bear with me.) That’s it – it’s not like there has to be some drama-filled showdown.

What was even worse were the many people who actually scheduled auditions and simply didn’t show up. No contact, no email saying “hey, I had something come up, I can’t make it”, no text message saying anything, just a no-show.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. (Cue the “old” jokes in 3…2…1) At the risk of sounding like I want the young whippersnappers to get off my lawn, people – hell, even musicians – used to behave better than this. We’ve had our share of no-shows over the years as we’ve replaced people, but this time MOST of the people who scheduled auditions didn’t bow out after taking a swing at a couple of songs, they didn’t cancel at the last second, they just went to the trouble of working out an audition time with me and then simply didn’t show up. It was much worse this time around than when we were auditioning people when Tim joined 2 years ago.

Is this the new norm? I hope not. However, my conclusions from discussions with friends in other bands are pretty discouraging…

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From Bravewords.com:
“Former INTO ETERNITY guitarist and “ambassador of Saskatchewan metal” Rob Doherty has suddenly passed. He played on the band’s 2004 album Buried In Oblivion. Into Eternity mainman Tim Roth says that “he was a special part of our band. Our condolences go out to all of Rob’s family and friends, and to all those, who Rob’s music touched.”

http://www.bravewords.com/news/182997

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Some things in metal just never die. No matter how far metal expands its palette, no matter how many influences are brought to bear, at the end of the day, everything comes home again: If you can’t enjoy a Maiden concert, you just flat-out don’t like metal. Commonality and diversity both have a role to play in holding a group together.

Now, what does all this have to do with Division, you ask? Well, as many of you know, vocalist Nick Kelly left us in February after over ten years of fronting the band. We had plenty of time to consider replacements, and brought in people for auditions. By the end of that process, it was pretty clear that the cliché in the title was once again becoming a truism.

So, without any further ado, meet the new singer – same as the old singer. Division would like to welcome original vocalist Scott Stewart back into the fold. Scott was the vocalist on our first two albums, Paradise Lost and Ascension to Eternity, and had remained a good friend of the band even after his departute. With his return to the DMV from Raleigh last year, he was in the right place at the right time to rejoin us. We will, of course, continue to perform material from all four albums, and just as Nick’s voice gave a new twist to some of Scott’s songs, Scott’s classic-metal-with-an-edge voice makes Nick’s material shine differently, too. You can listen to Scott here:

Now, if we could just find a bassist…

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