Accept frontman Mark Tornillo recently spoke to the Nothing Shocking podcast about his cover band named Gotham. He also reflected on how they put the band together and decided to cover Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and Korn songs.
Mark Tornillo is best known as Accept’s lead vocalist and songwriter, formed in 1976. In their career spanning over four decades, the band stood out with its distinctive sound since its formation. They’ve been very productive over the years and released sixteen studio albums up to this day. The band’s latest album entitled ‘Too Mean to Die’ arrived on January 29, 2021.
However, Mark Tornillo is not the band’s original lead singer. He joined the band in 2009 to replace Udo Dirkschneider. He contributed to the band’s last five studio albums on vocals, along with the live album ‘Restless and Live.’ Besides his tenure in Accept, Tornillo also recently joined the cover band, Gotham, initially formed by Scott Metaxas, Paul Crook, and Craig Scoppa in the 1990s.
During a recent interview, Tornillo shared how he got involved with this project. Tornillo knew the band and what kind of covers they had been performing. However, they hadn’t performed for years, and they also didn’t have a singer before Accept frontman witnessed a conversation between band members.
While Metaxas and Crook were talking about putting the band together again, Mark Tornillo stepped into the conversation and said he wanted a part of this project to step out of his comfort zone. Thus, they decided to perform various covers from Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Korn, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and many others.
Mark Tornillo speaking on his decision to join Gotham:
“Well, Gotham was actually a band that they had in the ’90s. I’m guessing it was Paul and Scott Metaxas from Prophet. And I don’t remember who the singer was at that point; I’m not sure of his name. Craig Scoppa was the drummer and still is. And it was just an industrial thing that they did; it was all covers of Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie and Korn, you name it; really, really, really heavy stuff.
And they hadn’t played for years. And Scott and I were hanging out one day, and Paul came over. They were talking about putting Gotham back together, and I just said, ‘Hell, I’ll sing.’ They were, like, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. Why not?’ I get to step out of my comfort zone a little bit. Why not? But I’ve also injected a bunch of AC/DC into it, some Aerosmith and stuff like that, but we heavy it up.
We do mash-ups. So there’s, we call it ‘Led Zombie,’ it’s Led Zeppelin’s ‘Immigrant Song’ to Zombie’s ‘Thunder Kiss ’65.’ It works. But we do some other mash-ups like that. We do a cover version of ‘Twilight Zone’ that we mashed up. We do a lot of cool stuff. It’s just a lot of fun. We go out and have fun, make a few dollars, have some drinks. And Paul Crook is just an amazing musician. You remember him from Anthrax and Meat Loaf. He’s been Meat’s music director for the last 15 years.”
You can listen to the full podcast through Spotify below.
