Nicko McBrain will embark on a short spring 2022 tour of Florida where he will perform classic songs from IRON MAIDEN with his TITANIUM TART project.

The dates are as follows:

March 31 – Brass Mug – Tampa, FL
April 02 – Haven Lounge – Winter Park, FL
April 07 – Capt Hirams Resort – Sebastian, FL
April 09 – Piper’s Pub – Pompano Beach, FL

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.

Posted by Titanium Tart on Wednesday, February 9, 2022

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A nearly five-year-old photo of current QUEENSRŸCHE vocalist Todd La Torre with the man he replaced, original QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate, was shared this past Thursday (February 10) on the band’s official Facebook page. The picture was taken when La Torre and Tate crossed paths in June 2017 when QUEENSRŸCHE and Tate performed — separately — at the Rock Fest Barcelona festival in Barcelona, Spain, where Geoff appeared as the special guest of AVANTASIA.

QUEENSRŸCHE captioned the picture: “Another pic from the vault. Spain 2017 – a million inquiries from the press about this day. As you can see, they had a very respectful and cordial conversation and interaction. Viral in 3…..2…..1…….”

La Torre joined QUEENSRŸCHE as the replacement for Tate, who was the band’s original lead vocalist, after the latter was fired in 2012. A two-year legal battle followed where Tate sued for the QUEENSRŸCHE name, only for guitarist Michael Wilton, drummer Scott Rockenfield and bassist Eddie Jackson to respond with a countersuit. They eventually settled the dispute, with Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson continuing as QUEENSRŸCHE, and Tate now having the sole right to perform the albums “Operation: Mindcrime” and “Operation: Mindcrime II” in their entirety live.

Last year, Tate spoke to Thorn Of Rock about his 2017 chance encounter with his former bandmates. Asked if watching his previous band perform with a new singer was akin to seeing an ex-wife with a new man for the first time, Tate laughed and said: “Yeah, kind of like that. [Laughs] I was actually at the show performing. I played with a band called AVANTASIA. So, AVANTASIA was headlining the Barcelona festival. And I went out early that day to the venue, ’cause I wanted to see QUEENSRŸCHE play. I hadn’t seen them perform before without me. I think they were playing at, like, three o’clock in the afternoon, and there was hardly anybody there, but it was really interesting to see them play. And their singer [Todd La Torre], God, he sounds just like me. It was very odd. But I’m glad I [saw them]. I got to say hi to all the guys — except Scott; he wasn’t in the band anymore, I guess, at that time. But I got to say hi to Michael and Eddie at least.” [Fan-filmed video of Geoff watching QUEENSRŸCHE perform from the side of the stage can be seen below.]

Todd recounted his meeting with Geoff during an August 2017 appearance on SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”. He said: “[Geoff] was guest-performing with AVANTASIA. And I went to the [QUEENSRŸCHE] tour bus and I came back, and I noticed… It’s a big backstage with all the drum risers there — you know how it is; they’re rolling them in and out — and I saw him talking with Eddie. And so I thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ because, you know, with everything that went down, you never know how’s that dynamic gonna be if we’re ever in close proximity together.”

According to Todd, the guys in QUEENSRŸCHE “didn’t know” that Geoff was going to be at the same event until “somebody had messaged me and said, ‘Hey, did you realize that there’s a likelihood that you’re gonna run into Geoff Tate there?’ So that was when I said to the guys, ‘Hey, just an F.Y.I.: he is performing with this band, so we’re probably gonna be in the same area. Just a heads up. I’m sure it’ll be cool, hopefully.’ And everyone was, like, ‘Okay. Whatever.”

La Torre continued: “And so I saw him chatting with Eddie, and it was cool. And then we were going on, I don’t know, maybe an hour, an hour and a half from that incident. And so our show started. He was stage left, so near Michael Wilton’s side of the stage, and he stood there, I would imagine, it seemed like probably the whole show. I knew he was standing there watching. So afterward, the show was done and he came over, I exited the stage and he came over and kind of tapped me on the shoulder or something and said, ‘Hey,’ and put his hand out and said, ‘We never really had a chance to meet, really.’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ I shook his hand and he said, ‘With everything that kind of went down…’, and I said, ‘Of course.’ And he said, ‘This is the first time I’ver heard you sing.’ And I didn’t know if he meant at all or, obviously, live. And so I said, ‘Okay.’ He said, he goes, ‘Wow! You’re amazing!’ And I said, ‘Well, thank you very much. That’s nice to hear.’ And I was complimentary of him. I said, ‘Listen, for what it’s worth, I have defended you. I know that sometimes the media and people can try to stir the pot, and for what it’s worth, as far I’m concerned, you’ve done it all. I was kind of just expressing the sentiment, like, ‘You don’t have anything to prove in my book. You’ve already done it all.’ And I said, ‘I’m doing the best job that I know how.’ I told him that the ‘Empire’ material is actually more difficult for me. I expressed to him that he’s always had a very smooth control over those vocal parts, and that’s more difficult for me. Now the older stuff is easier for me.’

At some point during Todd’s conversation with Geoff, “Michael came over and [Tate] shook his hand and said, ‘Man, the set was tight. It sounded great,'” La Torre recalled. ‘So that was… We joked around and I think at the very end, I had said, ‘It would be funny, since everybody is always trying to start shit between us,’ I said, ‘if we took a selfie together, that would be kind of hilarious, pointing at each other.’ And we did, but I never posted the photograph, ’cause I thought, ‘I don’t need to stir any waters.’ But we had a little laugh, and there was no craziness, nothing weird. So, at the end of the day, as an outsider, I thought, ‘You know, this is good that we can be in the same area, and there’s no craziness or anything.”

Todd said that he he appreciated Geoff’s encouraging words, especially considering how awkward it must have been for Tate to witness his former band performing their classic songs with a replacement singer.

“Of course, there are some people that are divided still, the purist type of mentality, and I’ve heard it all: I suck and I don’t sound anything like that, blah blah blah. And so I thought, what better testimony that the band is on the right track, the vocals sound worthy than to hear that from the original singer…” La Tore said. “I don’t like to use the word ‘endorsement,’ but certainly acknowledging that the vocals sound great, the band sounds tight. I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of an interesting perspective,’ if you look at it from what I’m mentioning, where some people say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t sound right,’ or this or that. And you say, ‘Well, the original singer seems to think that it sounds excellent,’ and what better testimony do you need?”

Asked by Trunk if it “played” on him at all during QUEENSRŸCHE’s performance at Rock Fest Barcelona that Tate was standing on the side of the stage watching him sing, La Torre said: “No. No. I mean, at first it’s, like, ‘Okay, he’s standing there watching.’ I guess there’s a moment of, ‘Well, that’s really kind of surreal: ‘Here’s the original singer watching the band perform and I’m singing those songs.’ So for a split second [I thought about it], but to be completely honest, I don’t care who’s on the side of the stage, I just am always gonna just do what I do and not let that affect my psychology of ‘How am I gonna perform?’ or ‘Do I feel intimidated?’ I just threw it right out the window and said, ‘Okay, there’s some people on the side of the stage, like there typically is. Just do your show.’ I don’t ever get nervous before a show. I mean, if my voice doesn’t feel good, then sometimes [I think], ‘I hope tonight’s gonna be good.'”

Todd continued: “In fact, [Geoff] had asked me [after our performance], he said, ‘How do you think the show went?’ And I said, ‘Do you mean for the band or for me?’ And I can’t remember — I think he might have said ‘both.’ And I said, ‘As far as the band goes, I think we did well.’ I said, ‘As far as my performance, I can blow that away,’ because I can. I said, ‘We’ve done all these shows — another six in a row, and then four in a row.’ I said, ‘I’ve only had one day off, and then another day off. So I’m a little tired, but I got through it.’ He was still, again, nice. He said to me, ‘I pity what you have to sing.’ And I thought, ‘I don’t know what that means.’ Because those records were so amazing and it’s not easy material by any means. And I just said to him, ‘You know what? Yeah, I can hit the high notes and do this and do that,’ I said, ‘but you know what you have that I don’t have?’ I said, ‘You created a sound and style of singing — in my opinion — that is iconic. And so you’ve done it all.’ I said, ‘You’ve forgotten more, probably, than most singers would ever really achieve on that kind of a professional level.'”

La Torre added: “So it was a nice, complimentary exchange. We shook each other’s hands, we did a little selfie. He was nice to me, I was nice to him. So, should there ever be another time where we’re in the same area, it’s nice to know that he could walk up to me or I could walk up to him, or whatever, and it’s fine. So that was good.”

QUEENSRŸCHE has released three albums thus far with La Torre on vocals: 2013’s “Queensrÿche”, 2015’s “Condition Hüman” and 2019’s “The Verdict”.

Three years ago, La Torre shared a nearly four-decade-old photo of him with Tate. La Torre posted the picture on his Facebook, along with the caption: “As a huge fan of QUEENSRŸCHE, I waited in line for an hour + to meet the band at an instore signing. Here is a pic of me and Geoff Tate I have kept private for decades. Little did I know that 20+ years later I would become the singer for QUEENSRŸCHE. Crazy.”

A former member of CRIMSON GLORY, La Torre has called QUEENSRŸCHE his “favorite band” since he was “probably 14 or 15 years old.” He later said about the opportunity to share the stage with QUEENSRŸCHE: “To be able to play those songs with the actual members was really a dream come true… I mean, I met them [more than] 20 years ago at a signing session they did in Clearwater, Florida. And they signed my ‘Warning’ album cover; I still have it. In my home studio, I have ‘Promised Land’ signed and beautifully framed by all the members. So when this actually came to be, I had to pinch myself… This resonates very personally for me because I have a lot of emotional connection to this music, and the fans do, too… It just all feels very comfortable and natural. And I couldn’t be more honored. This is a legendary band that’s never had another vocalist front those members. And so, out of all the people in the world that could have gotten chosen or would be vying for that position, I feel very lucky and fortunate that they chose me.”

#tbt: Another pic from the vault. Spain 2017 – a million inquiries from the press about this day. As you can see, they…

Posted by Queensrÿche on Thursday, February 10, 2022

Flashback Friday:

As a huge fan of Queensryche, I waited in line for an hour + to meet the band at an instore signing….

Posted by Todd La Torre on Friday, April 26, 2019

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The house that was once owned by late PANTERA drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott in Arlington, Texas has once again been sold.

Vinnie Paul designed the 3,784-square-foot home, which sits on 1.5 acres and offers expansive views of Arlington, downtown Fort Worth and Las Colinas.

The most recent owner of the home, Chris Johnston, co-owner of Texas Best Home Buyers, told The Dallas Morning News that the latest buyer wants to remain anonymous. He added that the home sold for a little under the asking price of $750,000 but declined to give the exact price tag.

Earlier in the month, AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows tweeted out a plan to buy Vinnie Paul’s house by creating a decentralized autonomous organization that would allow fans of PANTERA and the drummer’s post-PANTERA band HELLYEAH to purchase tokens, also known as NFTs, which they would then use to buy the four-bedroom, five-bath mansion. M. Shadows said that he wanted to preserve Vinnie’s legacy.

“This is the place where any musician that came through Dallas would come after a long night at Vinnie’s famous strip club or after the shows. Musicians, actors … you name it … It was like the ‘Graceland of Heavy Metal,'” M. Shadows tweeted.

Johnston previously told The Dallas Morning News about the property: “I’ve been in real estate a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this house. It was not built to be a family home. It was meant to be a party house.”

The secluded hilltop house, which was completed in 1995, features 40-plus-foot ceilings, four bedrooms, four and a half baths, two game rooms and a secret/safe room. The home has four newer, over-sized Lennox Elite AC units and a gas-operated Generac generator. The backyard features a large pool with waterfall and a spa that spills into the pool. Two fire pits are on each end of the waterfall.

Vinnie passed away on June 22, 2018 at his other home in Las Vegas at the age of 54. He died of dilated cardiomyopathy, an enlarged heart, as well as severe coronary artery disease. His death was the result of chronic weakening of the heart muscle — basically meaning his heart couldn’t pump blood as well as a healthy heart.

Vinnie Paul and his brother “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott co-founded PANTERA. When PANTERA broke up in 2003, they formed DAMAGEPLAN. On December 8, 2004, while performing with DAMAGEPLAN at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, Dimebag was shot and killed onstage by a troubled schizophrenic who believed that the members of PANTERA were stealing his thoughts.

According to TMZ, Vinnie Paul left the bulk of his estate to his longtime girlfriend Chelsey Yeager and his best friend; Charles Jones got 38% while Chelsey walked away with 37%. The rest was split between Vinnie’s tour manager (10%), drum tech (5%), producer (5%) and friend (5%). In addition, Vinnie gave his interest in Dimebag’s estate to the guitarist’s longtime girlfriend Rita Haney.

In 1996, Vinnie Paul — whose full name was Vincent Paul Abbott — and his brother opened a strip club in Dallas that became popular with athletes and visiting musicians. When the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars won the 1999 Stanley Cup, many of the team’s players partied afterward at Vinnie’s house. According to The Mercury News, one player attempted to throw the Cup into the swimming pool from a balcony, but it fell short and landed on the concrete — leaving a three-inch dent that had to be pounded out.

A public memorial for Vinnie Paul was held on July 1, 2018 at Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas.

Up until his death, Vinnie remained on non-speaking terms with PANTERA singer Philip Anselmo, whom the drummer indirectly blamed for the murder of Dimebag.

Not long before his death, Vinnie laid down the drum tracks for HELLYEAH’s sixth album, “Welcome Home”, which was released in September 2019.

Check it out, our company was mentioned in The Dallas Morning News!!! …

Posted by Texas Best Home Buyers on Thursday, February 3, 2022

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Former DEATH and MASSACRE guitarist Rick Rozz joined INCANTATION on stage on February 5 at the Haven Lounge in Winter Park, Florida to perform a cover of the DEATH classic “Evil Dead”. Fan-filmed video footage of his appearance can be seen below.

“Evil Dead” was originally written and recorded by the pre-DEATH band MANTAS, which featured Rozz alongside Chuck Schuldiner (guitar, vocals) and Kam Lee (vocals, drums). A re-recorded version of the song was included on DEATH’s debut album, 1987’s “Scream Bloody Gore”, which didn’t feature Rozz.

The demo version of “Evil Dead” was included on the MANTAS collection “Death By Metal”, which was made available in 2012 via Relapse. The collection contained extensive liner notes, featuring Rozz and renowned metal biographer Ian Christe, in addition to never-before-seen photos of the band.

INCANTATION’s latest full-length, “Sect Of Vile Divinities”, was issued in August 2020 via Relapse.

Rozz recently announced the formation of LEFT TO DIE in which he is joined by fellow classic DEATH and MASSACRE member Terry Butler (currently in OBITUARY), as well as GRUESOME founders Matt Harvey (EXHUMED) and Gus Rios (ex-MALEVOLENT CREATION). The Florida-based band is writing an EP and planning a summer U.S. tour, performing DEATH’s classic “Leprosy” album in its entirety, along with cuts from “Scream Bloody Gore”.

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