Hello everyone!

I know it's been ages, and for that I can only apologize, but please don't think that the four of us have been sat on our backsides in Sunderland, wasting away.  Oh no.  We've been as busy as we ever have over the last six months – we started the year writing and rehearsing for the third album, and, after playing some of our best shows in Austria, Italy, Russia, Germany, and Sweden (Cheers to everyone who came out and showed their support!) we jetted off to Granada in Spain to make the new record.

And I'm pleased to say it's pretty much finished!

We spent three weeks (yes, just THREE WEEKS – record time for the Futuremen!) in Andalusia with Youth making the as-yet-untitled (of course!) third album! It was our best recording experience yet because it was the first one that hasn't involved any kind of nervous breakdown/exhaustion/bleak-yorkshire-farmhouse-in-the-middle-of-winter!  The energy is back, and the songs are tighter, faster and, dare I say it, a bit more playful than before.

We've changed the way we write a little bit – I've been writing songs for Barry to sing, which he's taken to like Ol' Blue Eyes himself - Dave's got some riffs in there, Jaff's realized his dream of becoming the ultimate back-up singer – it's all going well so far!

We've got the usual boring stuff like mixing/mastering/giving the album a name still to come, so there's plenty of time for a big argument, but I must admit, Youth has done a great job in producing, and I think we've raised our game since 'News and Tributes'.

There's much more Punk Rock spirit in the new stuff, and we'll be streaming some of it online over the coming months for you to see for yourselves.  The proof really will be in the pudding, I suppose – we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

We can't wait to get back on tour – it's been far too long, but I guess we'll have to hold our horses just a little while longer, because we still have some of the fine print to sort out with the album, and there's not much point in going on the road without having sorted the red-tape….  Can't wait though.

We also got some good footage of recording on Dave's camcorder, so hopefully, once somebody has drawn the shortest straw and been given the hideously painstaking task of raking through the archives of cassettes, we'll lash a bit of that on the MySpace too!  I really need to get to grips with YouTube, and start using it for the band's sake, rather than trawling through fan choreography at Eastern European football matches….

I'll keep you posted in a far more regular fashion about what we're doing, and hopefully you guys will be interested enough to sign up to our NEW!  IMPROVED! Mailing List, through which you can get exclusive titbits of info, like what Barry's favorite piece of offal is.