He left Every Time I Die last year to start a new project called Deadly Animals. And now, with the latter six feet under, drummer Mike 'Ratboy' Novak, who was an original member of ETID, has joined a new band: Cute Is What We Aim For.

Cute Is What We Aim For frontman Shaant Hacikyan, who has revived his band after announcing his plans to go solo last summer, recently broke the news. In the interview, Hacikyan explains how his struggles with alcoholism contributed to the dissolution of Cute. Now he's enlisted new players for the group, who'll be touring soon with Friday Night Boys.

Hacikyan says that Cute "will always be my project. But [Mandy K's] Mike Brady and Kevin Scoma and former Every Time I Die drummer Mike Novak are recording and touring with me." He explains that, when he first started writing material for Cute's next album, he soon realized he'd need someone who could really pound the skins.

"I knew I needed the expertise of a great drummer," Hacikyan says. "It just so happens that we share some mutual friends, so I asked him to help me record the demos. We started working together, realized we come from a common background of 'been there, done that' and now we're home. Using this connection, we decided we could do it again if we tried. The cool thing about Novak is that, [growing up in] Buffalo, I've had posters of ETID on my walls since I was a young teen. I don't know how I got this lucky."

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