For Blackula vocalist Brooke Lamm, the return is especially gratifying. It was Lamm’s illness that sidelined the band and almost took his life.

Blackula burst onto the local scene in the summer of 1995 with a rhythmic, percussive, bass-driven hard rock sound that walked a line between metal and hardcore with blistering guitar riffs. The band developed a following but attracted almost as much attention for Lamm’s onstage buck dancing as for the music.

Lamm, a native of Black Mountain, N.C., learned the heavy stamping dance style from his grandfather and performed with his family at area music festivals from the age of 5. Buck dancing, Lamm explains, is a cousin to clogging. Like clogging, it”s a descendent of Scots-Irish jigs, but clogging is usually performed by large dance groups, while buck dancing refers to a solo dancer backed up by a bluegrass band.

“It’s something my whole family has done,” Lamm says of bucking. “Our family has always performed, so I just kind of grew up with it”.

One day Lamm had the inspiration to buck dance to Blackula’s rock, adding his own rhythmic stomps to drummer Mike Brueggen and thus was a rock legend was born.

About four years ago, Lamm began to experience stomach pains. Doctors were unable to find a cause, so Lamm concluded that he simply suffered from poor-digestion and resolved to live with his problem. Then, two years ago, Lamm slowly began to feel much worse.

He had severe stomach pains, was tired all the time and often suffered from nausea after eating; “It eventually got to the point where one morning I woke up and felt this pop in my gut,” he says. “I felt this pain spread through my gut.”

Lamm eventually was admitted to the hospital suffering from severe anemia and internal bleeding, the result of three separate infections in his abdominal cavity. “What my body had done was actually push all my intestines to one side and build different walls to hold back this infection,” Lamm explains. “I should have been dead from this. If not for the one antibiotic known to treat this, I definitely would have been dead.”

He spent three-and-a-half weeks in the hospital with a stomach tube. He didn’t cat for a month and a half. At one point, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic, debilitating gastrointestinal disorder.

When Lamm finally was released from the hospital, his six-foot-two frame had withered to 110 pounds. “I looked like I’d, come out of a concentration camp,” Lamm recalls. “I couldn’t walk. I had no muscle tone. I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. It was a pretty traumatic experience.”

Over the next 10 months, Lamm underwent two further surgeries to repair his damaged insides. After the third operation, he slowly began to regain his strength.

During Lamm’s illness, the rest of the band-Brueggen, guitarist Ryan Dufrene and bassist Jonathan Seder-stuck together. Dufrene used the time off to work on a side-project, the Inbred Potheads, while drummer Brueggen sat in with Nailboss and a Rhudabega side project. They also continued to write songs for Blackula. “A lot of it ended up going by the wayside, but a lot of good things came out of it,” Lamm says. “So there was a good cache of material ‘when I got ready start doing things again.”

Now, as strong as he’s felt in years, Lamm is polishing up his buck dancing moves for a long’- awaited return to the scene, and quire a return it is. Next month, Blackula plans to unveil its debut CD, Cherry Wicked. Recorded two years ago but shelved due to Lamm’s illness, Cherry Wicked, which perfectly captures the Blackula sound, serves as an appropriate introduction to their idiosyncratic style.

The MacGillcuddys celebrate the release of their debut seven inch – “Stylin’ and Profilin'” b/w “Cactus Jack” – this month, not on Savage Records (as incorrectly reported here last month) but on locally based Splitsville Records. The MacGillicuddys soon-to-be released full-length CD will be issued on Savage.

Splitsville, a local label run by Royal Pendletons drummer King Louie Bankston, previously issued a split seven inch featuring the Pendletons, Impala, Fortune of Maltese and the Exotic Aarontones and “Hock Bottom,” a seven inch by Bankston’s punk band, the Persuaders.

The relentlessly rocking MacGillicuddys have been together for three years churning out MC5- inspired old school punk. After going through a revolving door of drummers, bass player and vocalist Jerry MacGillcuddy, of Jerry and the Bastardmakers fame, and guitarist Paul Switchblade hooked up with Gerry Parody, finally giving the MacGillicuddys a reliable lineup. “Stylin'” finds the boys serving a double scoop of sloppy punk and hardcore, sounding something like Iggy Pop fronting the Ramones with a shot of Minor Threat tossed in for good measure.

The MacGillicuddys will be at the Mermaid Lounge on April 1 for a record release parry. Opening the show are the Persuaders and Pretty Boy’ Forbes, a Jackson, Miss., native dubbed “The Grandpa of Gospel”.

After almost five years, the Continental Drifters finally have a new CD to promote. Well, sort of new. Vermilion was recorded about a year ago at Dockside Studio in Maurice, La., and released in May 1998 by Germany’s Blue Rose Records, the label that licensed the Drifters self-titled debut in that country. Since its release, Vermilion has become the biggest seller in the label’s history, and both readers and critics ranked it No.3 in the German edition of Rolling Stone poll.

Drifters bassist Mark Walton says non-Germanic fans should soon be able to hear for themselves what the Germans are raving about. The band is currently pondering offers from U.S. labels to release  Vermilion in America. Walton says it should be available by summer. In the meantime you can pick up the import version at Louisiana Music Factory, Borders, from the band’s Website. www.continentaldrifters.com , or directly from the band at one of their gigs.

And in case you hadn’t noticed, the Drifters have resumed their “Continental Drifters and Friends” shows at the Howlin’ Wolf. They’ll be there every Tuesday night this month.

Erstwhile Burnversion bassist and vocalist James Marler has a new band, the Rotary Downs. For WTUL’s Rock-On Survival Marathon gig, Marler performed nine new songs with a band consisting of Lee and Todd Gillespie, of the aptly named Gillespie Brothers, and guitarist Chris Colombo.