ATHEIST's Kelly Shaefer has issued the following update:

"As I write this I am sitting in Casa de Flynn (ie Steve Flynn's pad) in Atlanta, GA, freezing my ass off and suffering from a SkyeLilly induced head cold (Thank you my little blue eyed).

We were in the 'infamous' Led Belly Studios yesterday finishing the mixing of Atheist Live At Wacken. It's a very stripped down, no overdubs live recording from our appearance at Wacken Open Air in 2006 as part of the reunion dates we did. This was only the fourth show on what would become many. So why record the fourth show? Well we did not actually ever intend on it, but we found out that Wacken had raw tracks that could be re-mixed, whereas most recordings we get are from soundboards, and you cannot turn up gtrs, vox etc on those type of recordings.

So... we obtained the raw tracks and have now mixed eight tunes with Matt (Mastodon, Gnostic) at Ledbelly Studios here in the ATL. The results? A very very live (mistakes and all) and raw set of tracks from the Piece of Time, and Unquestionable Presence era of Atheist. It sounds suprisingly warm, and for those who were there in Germany that afternoon to see Atheist on what was probably one of the more 'magical' performances we have ever had as a band, it was really the first time we had played for people who had been around back in the early days of the band, and were now writers, or owned record companies, plus all of the new fans of this strange technical metal genre of music... this will encapsulate that experience for us, you and as well as those who were not there that day... It was a great day!

Tonight 2/6/09 we are heading to Avatar rehearsal studios to write for the new Atheist record, Sonny, Chris, Flynn and myself... along with new Gnostic bass player JT helping us 'til Tony Choy arrives, will be continue sculpting, and creating this new piece of 'art' that is materializing as the first new Atheist music in almost 16 years. Tony Choy will be joining us soon, and we can hardly wait to hear how it will all sound ourselves. Ok cheers to you all, and love to my SkyeLilly."