Almost two years since TWISTED SISTER‘s brief reunion at the Metal Hall of Fame, Mark “The Animal” Mendoza discussed his relationship with his former bandmates on the “Rockstrap” podcast.
“The guys in the band, we all talk. We’re all good friends. We talk often,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “Obviously, A.J.‘s [Pero, late TWISTED SISTER drummer] not around anymore, ’cause if A.J. were there, it’d be five of us. And we love [stand-in TWISTED SISTER drummer] Mike Portnoy, but he doesn’t know that all the inside stuff on the band. But the four of us — that would be Dee [Snider, vocals], Jay Jay [French, guitar], Eddie [Ojeda, guitar] and myself — we have a group text message, and once every two months or so, somebody says something idiotic to somebody else, and it’s like a nuclear war. The stuff that goes on, I sit here and I read it and I get in on it and you start crying. It is so funny.”
As for whether TWISTED SISTER might reunite again, Mark said: “We’ve said never say never. That’s the song. Never say never, never say never. There’s no talk of it now, but you never know what’s gonna happen in the future. I think as long as the four of us can get on stage and perform and nobody else dies, which, you know, God forbid, I don’t wanna see that happen, there’s a slight chance. But we’re not talking about playing. None of us are saying, ‘Hey, let’s do it next year.’ Who knows what happens? And just like you say, somebody’s gonna need money [laughs], and we’re gonna have to play. [Laughs] And it ain’t me. [Laughs]”
Back in April, Dee Snider was on the “The Hook Rocks!” podcast, and they asked him if TWISTED SISTER would ever do more shows together. He said at the time: “As a result of all the bands retiring and dying, the offers get bigger and bigger for the holdouts to come back. And we retired in 2016, I think it was. So we’re on eight years now of not playing, with no intention of coming back. But — my father, he says, ‘Everything before the word ‘but’ is bulls**t — but at some point, you’ve gotta say, ‘Well, how can I say no to that?'”
“Is it there yet? No. Is it getting close? Yeah,” he continued. “Is there talk amongst us, like, ‘Well, in the event that the numbers do get there, and they sure as hell seem to be going in that direction, how are we gonna do this?’ So there’s a little bit of that conversation. And that’s both physically how we’re gonna do it and on a number of other levels. And that’s a recent occurrence, that the conversation has gone from ‘never’ to ‘in the event that they make as an offer we can’t refuse, what’s the plan?’ And there’s some very general discussion on that, involving personal trainers [laughs], diets, hair extensions. And that’s the first time in eight years that the conversation has changed.”
“We’re all friends, by the way. The surviving guys, we all talk and we’re all friends and we love each other. And that was one of the great things that came out of getting back together the first time is that we managed to fix the friendships and be friends and that, to me, is really why I wanted to do it in the first place, getting back [together] last time… So, anyway, we’ll see what happens.”
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.