Former DREAM THEATER and current THE WINERY DOGS drummer Mike Portnoy has revealed that he has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The 54-year-old musician, who lives in Pennsylvania, shared his positive diagnosis with his 521,000 Instagram followers on Saturday (April 2). He posted a photo of his positive test and he included the following message: “Yep…ugh! PS – this is my 1st time getting it…turns out when I was sick in Feb after the NMB [NEAL MORSE BAND] tour, it was just a very bad sinus infection…” He added: “Anyways – comments turned off to avoid any political, Vaxx, masks, etc BS – don’t need any of that headache adding to this”.

Earlier today (Sunday, April 3), Portnoy returned to his Instagram and shared a picture of another positive test. He wrote: “Day 3…this sucks #FuckCovid”.

Back in June 2020, in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Portnoy blasted people who refused to wear a mask in public spaces to protect others from possible infection. At the time, he took to his Twitter to share a video of a woman apparently throwing items from her shopping cart after being told by a store manager to keep her mask on.

“What the hell is wrong with some people??” Portnoy wrote. “All because she’s supposed to wear a mask in a store to protect other people…how much more childish, irresponsible and selfish can people be?? Are they throwing fits because they have to wear a seatbelt in the car too??? #growup”

Portnoy added in follow-up tweets: “This isn’t about YOU, it’s about OTHERS!! How can people like you be so selfish?? It is so YOU don’t spread YOUR potentially infected germs onto other people who may be vulnerable and at risk!!! How isn’t that soooo blatantly obvious?? And this isn’t about ‘sides’ or politics!

“There are certain matters that ‘Freedom of Choice’ doesn’t apply!! Are you allowed to drive without a seatbelt?? Better yet, are you ‘allowed’ to drive drunk??? It’s a matter of public safety & being considerate so as to not harm or kill yourself or others! Stop being so selfish”

Last September, during an interview with TWISTED SISTER bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza’s Internet show “22 Now”, Portnoy spoke about the prospect of going back on the road while the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging. He said: “Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about it. I understand the wanting to go out. I had a tour with the NEAL MORSE BAND that was scheduled to begin next month. We ended up having to pull the plug and push it into next year, just because we’re seeing all of these other tours coming down and people getting COVID out there, even if they’re vaccinated. One guy gets it, and then the show comes down. You watch KISS just firing up their tour, two or three shows in, and then Paul [Stanley] gets it and they have to sit in a hotel for a week. And then they’re just getting ready to go again, then Gene [Simmons] gets it. Just the idea of having to quarantine in a hotel for a week or two, putting everybody, the crew and the gear and the trucks and everything on hold and the venues, it’s scary. And I understand the hesitation to go back out. ‘Cause with the NEAL MORSE BAND, we just made that call. We had to look at the situation and say, ‘Look, we really wanna play. We’re dying to get out there. But is it worth the risk, both in terms of health and in terms of financial?’, to be honest, as well… You’ve gotta put everybody in hotels for a week, you’ve gotta [pay for] the crew and the trucks and the gear… And you’re losing the show guarantees; you’re losing all that income…

“I know we wanna play, but we’ve gotta be safe too,” he explained. “It’s a tough call to make… It hurt for us to cancel this MORSE BAND tour, but we said to each other, ‘Look, first of all, if we have to cancel some shows and sit in hotel rooms, are we willing to be personally liable for that financially?’ And everyone was, like, ‘Well, no. Not really.’ Nobody wants to be stuck holding the bag. So we said if there was any single bandmember that is uncomfortable being out there and going to do it; we’re not gonna make anybody do something they’re not comfortable doing. So unless it was unanimous, we said if any one person is not ready to go back out there and take those risks, let’s just wait.”

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This past week, Nicko McBrain embarked on a short tour of Florida where he is performing classic songs from IRON MAIDEN with his TITANIUM TART project. Fan-filmed video of the tour’s kickoff, which took place on Thursday, March 31 at the Brass Mug in Tampa, Florida, can be seen below.

McBrain and TITANIUM TART previously performed on December 4, 2021 at the 12th-anniversary celebration for Rock N Roll Ribs, the barbecue restaurant owned by the IRON MAIDEN drummer and close friend Mitch Tanne, in Coral Springs, Florida. Fan-filmed video footage of the entire show is available below.

McBrain was born in Hackney, East London, on June 5, 1952. His first experience of music came via his father’s love of traditional jazz. Young Nicko’s hero was Joe Morello, the late, great drummer with the legendary THE DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET. Nicko would often take to the kitchen, using forks and knives to beat on anything he could find at home. Fed up with him bashing up the kitchen utensils, his parents finally bought him his first drum kit when he was 12.

By the time he left school at 15, he was already a veteran of several part-time pub groups. Musically, however, his tastes had broadened to include more contemporary sixties sounds from THE SHADOWS, THE ANIMALS, THE BEATLES and THE ROLLING STONES. On the recommendation of another drummer he knew, he began to take on session work, playing on countless different recordings.

In 1975, Nicko joined STREETWALKERS, the band formed by ex-FAMILY members, vocalist Roger Chapman and guitarist Charlie Whitney. From the late seventies until 1982 when he joined IRON MAIDEN, Nicko had spent his time in session work, most memorably with the PAT TRAVERS BAND on their 1976 “Makin’ Magic” album, and also appeared in the band MCKITTY in the early 1980’s. It was during a MCKITTY gig in Belgium that he first met IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris.

He officially joined IRON MAIDEN in December 1982 for the 1983 “Piece Of Mind” album and tour, replacing Clive Burr, after McBrain’s previous band TRUST had supported IRON MAIDEN during the U.K. leg of the “Killers” tour in 1981.

With 14 studio and eight live albums currently under his belt with MAIDEN, Nicko’s role as the driving force behind the band’s sound has served as a major influence to many of today’s top drummers and solidified his place in music history.

McBrain and his wife still live in the same Boca Raton, Florida home they bought in 1989 when Nicko relocated from England.

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ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian was joined by his 10-year-old son Revel Young Ian on drums as they performed renditions of several FOO FIGHTERS songs for an Instagram video which Scott shared on Sunday (April 3). Scott captioned the clip: “Paying tribute to Taylor…we’ve been jamming our favorite Foo’s all week. Healing our hearts with the power of rock. We love you Taylor and Dave and Pat and Chris and Nate and Rami. @foofighters #taylorhawkins #patsmear @davestruestories @shifty71 #natemendel #ramijaffee”.

Scott previously shared videos of him and Revel performing the SEPULTURA songs “Roots Bloody Roots” and “Territory”, as well as SYSTEM OF A DOWN’s “Bounce”, KORN’s “Here To Stay” and HELMET’s “In The Meantime”.

Revel is apparently a gifted multi-instrumentalist who joined the FOO FIGHTERS on stage in September 2019 at the Bourbon & Beyond festival in Louisville, Kentucky to perform “Everlong” on guitar when he was just eight years old.

Back in 2014, Ian told Horns Up Rocks that his then-three-old son was a big fan of METALLICA, THE BEATLES and AC/DC and that he could already tell the difference between Bon Scott’s voice and that of Brian Johnson.

“He knows a lot of the stuff that he hears or sees in the house,” Scott said at the time. “But what’s really cool is that he actually recognizes and knows the difference between Bon Scott and Brian Johnson, which is pretty cool, I think, for an almost three-year-old. Anytime AC/DC is on, he’ll go, ‘That’s Bon singing.’ And then when it’s not Bon, he’ll say, ‘That’s not Bon singing.’ He knows. That’s pretty cool, I think.”

Asked whether metal musicians should be parents, Ian said it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He added: “I think you have to take that on a case-by-case basis. I couldn’t say enough about having a child; I think it’s the greatest thing ever in the whole world. But I do think that there are a lot of people on this planet, not necessarily metal musicians, that shouldn’t be parents.”

Hawkins was found dead on March 25 at the Four Seasons Casa Medina hotel in Bogota, Colombia while FOO FIGHTERS were on tour.

An official cause of death for Hawkins hasn’t yet been released. But on March 26, Colombia’s attorney general’s office released a preliminary toxicology report, saying that medical examiners found evidence of 10 types of substances in Hawkins’s body, including opioids, benzodiazepines, marijuana and antidepressants.

Hawkins joined FOO FIGHTERS in 1997. Prior to that, he played with the Orange County band SYLVIA and was also in the backing band for Sass Jordan. He also toured with Alanis Morissette as her drummer.

Hawkins was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last year as a member of the FOO FIGHTERS.

Hawkins’s most recent work with FOO FIGHTERS included last year’s “Medicine At Midnight” album, a collection of BEE GEES covers and FOO FIGHTERS’ horror film “Studio 666”.

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On Wednesday, March 30, Dave Mustaine spoke to SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” about the upcoming MEGADETH album, “The Sick, The Dying, And The Dead”. Tentatively due on July 8, the follow-up to 2016’s “Dystopia” features a cover of DEAD KENNEDYS’ “Police Truck” and Sammy Hagar’s “This Planet’s On Fire”, the latter of which includes vocals from Hagar himself.

Regarding when fans can expect to hear some of the new MEGADETH music, Mustaine said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We know that the whole entire thing is scheduled for July 8th. And the hopes are that we stay on schedule with that. And I know that we’ve got a single that is gonna be serviced to radio any day now. It’s a song called ‘Killing Time’. Obviously, that’s [written about] somebody in my past, but it’s not as obvious as it sounds; it’s wasting your time, not time to kill things. And it had to do with some of the situations that myself and the different band guys have gotten themselves into with the band over time. And I’m sure a lot of people are gonna relate with that. So that one, it’s gonna be sent to radio, gosh, any day now.”

Asked if MEGADETH will perform a new song on the upcoming 2022 leg of “The Metal Tour Of The Year”, which is scheduled to launch on Saturday, April 9 in Las Vegas, Nevada, Mustaine said: “We have this track called ‘Night Stalker’, and we’re hoping to use that as our new opening track. None of us are together yet, so we haven’t had a chance to sit down and start getting all the hiccups worked out of the track other than when we were in the studio together. But once we use that for our opening track, it’s got some sounds in it that is something we’re gonna incorporate into the beginning of our show. And it’s a track that we have… my buddy Ice-T had guested on.”

Mustaine spoke in more detail about “Night Stalker” in a separate interview with Jose Mangin of SiriusXM Liquid Metal. He said: “It’s a brutal song. I can’t remember if that was the fastest one [on the new album] or not. But ‘Night Stalker’ is about the 160th Battalion with the United States Army, and it’s all the black-ops helicopters that go in at night — nobody knows they’re there; they’re in, they’re out. And I had my buddy Ice-T join me on a part in the middle of it, because Ice was a ranger for the army, and he did two tours over in Afghanistan, I think it was. I think that was back in ’91, when I first met him. It might have been a little earlier than that, but I know he was a ranger. And I had just done something on his last record. But when I asked him, I thought it would be great to have him because of his bravado and then the fact that he’s got real credibility as someone who was there. And then we’ve got several other guys to participate in the track just to make it as real as possible. We’re going up to the base to go film a bunch of helicopter footage and sounds and stuff like that. We’ve got three videos that we’re making for this record right now down in Brazil, and we’re combining all that production and the stuff from the base, with the helicopters and everything together, to make this first three-song video offering up.”

Regarding Hagar’s contribution to “This Planet’s On Fire”, Mustaine told “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”: “It’s a super-heavy song. And the good thing about this [is] we didn’t just do the song; [Sammy] played on it too. So we’ve got a little bit of some guitar; we’ve got a lot of bit of singing. I think it’s super badass.”

As for MEGADETH’s decision to cover “Police Truck”, Mustaine said: “It’s no secret I’m a big DEAD KENNEDYS fan, and I had wanted to do ‘Holiday In Cambodia’, but my friends in LÄÄZ ROCKIT had done that, and I felt that [I would] just let them have their glory off of that rendition of that song, and if the time comes, I’m sure there’s another song that’ll stick out to me. And there was — it was the song ‘Police Truck’. So we recorded that one.”

A few days ago, Mustaine confirmed that TESTAMENT bassist Steve DiGiorgio laid down the bass tracks on “The Sick, The Dying, And The Dead”.

There had been speculation about DiGiorgio’s involvement in the new MEGADETH LP since last July, based on a Cameo video Mustaine recorded in which he offered the first glimpse of the bassist that re-recorded David Ellefson’s bass tracks on the much-anticipated MEGADETH effort.

DiGiorgio is widely renowned as a pioneer on the fretless bass in heavy metal music, having played with TESTAMENT, DEATH and SADUS, among others. Within his genre, Steve is respected for his playing skills, versatility and incredible technique. He has more than 40 studio album recordings and over 20 years of touring the world.

Three months ago, Mustaine revealed that James LoMenzo will play bass for MEGADETH when the band returns to the road in April for the second U.S. leg of “The Metal Tour Of The Year”. Joining them will be co-headliners LAMB OF GOD along with special guests TRIVIUM and IN FLAMES.

LoMenzo joined MEGADETH in 2006 and appeared on two of the group’s studio albums, 2007’s “United Abominations” and 2009’s “Endgame”. He was fired from the band in 2010 and replaced with returning original MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson.

In addition to MEGADETH, LoMenzo has played with Ozzy Osbourne, Zakk Wylde and WHITE LION. For the past nine years, LoMenzo has been performing with iconic rocker John Fogerty.

LoMenzo played his first show with MEGADETH in nearly 12 years last August in Austin, Texas. The concert took place three months following Ellefson’s dismissal from MEGADETH after sexually tinged messages and explicit video footage involving him were posted on Twitter.

Ellefson laid down his bass tracks on MEGADETH’s sixteenth LP in May 2020 at a studio in Nashville, Tennessee. A short time later, he raved about his performance on the record, telling the 96.7 KCAL-FM radio program “Wired In The Empire” that his musical chemistry with Verbeuren was comparable to the interplay between Geddy Lee and Neil Peart on classic RUSH albums. “I feel like on the new MEGADETH record, me and Dirk have those same moments,” he said. “It’s MEGADETH — it’s not RUSH, obviously — but in the field of what we do, there were these moments that I was just going, ‘Oh, my God.’ This is me as a kid going, ‘This is my Geddy/Neil moment right here.'”

In June 2021, Mustaine announced during an episode of his Gimme Radio program “The Dave Mustaine Show” that Ellefson’s bass tracks would not be used on the new MEGADETH LP.

Ellefson was in MEGADETH from the band’s inception in 1983 to 2002, and again from 2010 until his latest departure.

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As many of you know, I have operated a school of lutherie for over 40 years. It all started when I took control of the Guitar Hospital repair shop from my friend Dan Erlewine in the mid ’80s. The establishment was already offering short-term training to select individuals, and, at first, I focused on teaching repairs, which was the prime area of interest for most students. Since then, my school has grown from working with one student at a time to a peak of over 20 students in a single term.Our training options eventually segued into ground-up builds of both electric and acoustic guitars, and grew from a single-month session to two-month and six-month training programs. To date, we offer enrichment classes, extra-curricular seminars, and expanded graduate classes that, in total, can run up to a year in length. Like all trade schools, our classes constantly shift and change with the times, and, in many cases, our research has developed technology and techniques that keep our school relevant and up to date.Surround a person with like-minded people and inspiring topics, and they will blossom.So, what does it mean to be enrolled in a program such as mine and how does it prepare you for the guitar industry? Let’s start with the name of my six-month Masters Program. This title, by no stretch of the imagination, means you will be a master luthier after six months of training. The name came from a questionnaire I sent to many top luthiers asking what topics a student should be able to cover and what skills they would want to see from a potential employee. Then, I took that information, kicked it up a few notches, developed a reasonable curriculum, and founded the Master Class.What would a day in the life of a fledgling luthier look like once enrolled in our program? First, the name of the game with any trade school is safety, safety, and safety. We are dealing with jointers, band saws, and routers—all of which could certainly cause harm if not monitored appropriately. Then there are the solvents, finishes, and exotic woods that could all be irritants (or worse) if the proper precautions are not taken into consideration.After safety is covered, students can fully consider what classes they want to take and what their personal lutherie goals are. For those who already have a job in the industry, they could choose the longer sessions. However, for many students the much shorter à la carte session—which can be taken over time–—is the way to go. Retirees looking for a second career generally opt for the longer sessions, grinding through the program and getting back to work.And, as with all trade schools, vocational rehabilitation is always part of the picture. We collaborate with many departments nationwide, retraining people for a career in lutherie. Additionally, we work with the U.S. military to offer our knowledge and education to disabled veterans, or those taking advantage of the post-9/11 G.I. Bill. This has become a popular way for veterans to jumpstart a career in lutherie.It’s the younger students who need to put a little more thought into how they are going to make the most of their training dollars. There are many who have already gone the university path and now want to focus on something they feel more passionate about. Many of these students end up going back to school, focusing on business-related classes once they see a clearer path for their future. I also see students arrive here fresh out of high school that are right-brain thinkers. If you plug these students into the wrong environment, they may never flourish. I have seen this time and time again. But surround a person with like-minded people and inspiring topics, and they will blossom.For me, after four decades of operating a trade school and watching students maneuver their way through the world of lutherie, I have come to understand that my student body can take many forms. However, the bottom line is this: Choosing the correct training program is key for success, and there’s no one training class that’s right for all. Each student has to figure out their own goals, and then my school will provide the path to achieving it.

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Fan-filmed video of SLIPKNOT’s April 2 concert at Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania can be seen below.

SLIPKNOT kicked off the 2022 iteration of its “Knotfest Roadshow” tour on March 16 at the Fargodome in Fargo, North Dakota.

The “Knotfest Roadshow” tour is taking place over two legs, both headlined by SLIPKNOT. The first leg features special guests IN THIS MOMENT and WAGE WAR. The second leg will feature special guests CYPRESS HILL and HO99O9. The first leg of the 38-date run, produced by Live Nation, will wrap up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Sunday, April 17. The second leg kicks off on Wednesday, May 18 in University Park, Pennsylvania and hits a further 17 cites before culminating on Sunday, June 18 in Chula Vista, California.

“Knotfest Roadshow”‘s return also features on-site merchandise from official tour sponsor Blackcraft Cult.

2021 marked a banner year for SLIPKNOT. Making a triumphant return to the road, their “Knotfest Roadshow” 2021 tour sold out amphitheaters across the country, bookended with the record-breaking Knotfest Iowa and the biggest headline show of their career, Knotfest Los Angeles at Banc of California Stadium where they debuted their first new music in two years, the furious “The Chapeltown Rag”, taken from the highly anticipated new SLIPKNOT album, expected later this year. In addition, they topped the bills of multiple, internationally renowned festivals, including Riot Fest, Rocklahoma, Inkcarceration and Welcome To Rockville.

The “Knotfest Roadshow” tour is part of Live Nation’s Live Stubs initiative which provides digital collectible NFT ticket stubs to ticket holders. Live Stubs are automatically be included with tickets purchased for the tour. Fans are also able to view, share, gift, trade, and resell their live stubs on LiveNation.com.

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