The Genesis
Over 20 years ago there were rumors bubbling of a project with three iconic metal singers collaborating on material in a manner similar to The Three Tenors of opera. This was originally referred to as “The Three Tremors”, and later “Trinity”, as Bruce was concerned about being sued by the opera trio.
Bruce originally envisioned this as himself, Rob Halford, and Ronnie James Dio as the three singers – but due to some issues with management, perhaps including Rod Smallwood’s idea that Dio was “too old”, it was instead proposed as Bruce, Rob, and Geoff Tate of Queensrÿche.
As you can see above, at least one promo photo was composed during that time, and Bruce and Roy Z. started working on material that would “make each song designed to be sung by three different characters as an integral part of the song, not something like, ‘You sing the first verse, I’ll sing the second verse, and he’ll sing the chorus.’ That would be a crap way to do it.”
Apparently originally inspired by turning “The One You Love To Hate” into a duet for Bruce and Rob (source), they got as far as writing “A Tyranny Of Souls” and two other songs (including one that was turned into “Shadow Of The Gods” on The Mandrake Project), before running out of time and basically giving up. “A Tyranny Of Souls” was obviously used on Bruce’s solo album and ultimately sung only by him, but you can hear in the lyrics and the music how it would have worked with a trio.
There are different accounts of how this all went down, with Bruce claiming that he had one meeting with Geoff Tate and immediately decided it wasn’t going to work with him, but later saying that their busy touring schedules were the actual problem. Geoff Tate’s recollection is that he and Bruce and Rob were having dinner at an Italian restaurant with Rod Smallwood while they were all touring together, and The Three Tenors came on, Rod asked the waiter about it, and then made a joke about the three singers at the table touring as The Three Tremors, without the idea of Dio ever coming up.
There’s also this one-off performance of Bruce and Geoff joining Rob on stage for “The One You Love To Hate”:
Whatever the actual reasons, this incarnation of the project with the lead singers of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Queensrÿche never came together.
The Farm Team
Fast forward to 2016, and Geoff Tate has been kicked out of Queensrÿche and is in the middle of releasing albums from his Operation: Mindcrime project, where he recorded a song with former Judas Priest vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens and former Iron Maiden singer Blaze Bayley. The three men come together for a short tour under the “Trinity” banner, complete with a publicity photo that apes the earlier photo:
They didn’t record any other material together, but at the end of each show they’d do an encore where they’d all sing some songs from their former bands:
Really just a sad farm team version of the original idea, trying to milk the urban legend for some extra ticket sales.
Interestingly, Ripper stated definitively after the tour that he would never work with Geoff Tate again, without going into details about why. Geoff left the door open to working with Ripper again, though.
The Final Insult
Coming off of the Trinity tour, Ripper saw an opportunity to exploit this idea further, so he teamed up with Harry Conklin of Jag Panzer and Sean Peck of Cage to churn out a bunch of mostly poorly-written, screamy metal-by-numbers tracks without much thought put into the vocal parts, and doing it under the banner of “The Three Tremors”. Apparently the first album sold enough to crap out a second one, too.
Sean Peck went so far as to register the name for himself, though he “graciously” offered to let Bruce use the name if he ever wanted to resurrect the original idea.
These bozos should be ashamed of themselves, IMO.
EDIT Feb 10, 2024: Corrected comments about “The One You Love To Hate” (thanks @GhostofCain) and added a reference to “Shadow Of The Gods”.
