SINNER Trivia — 27 Entries
27 sourced facts about SINNER.
Trivia
The cover of the Killers' "When You Were Young" on 2022's Brotherhood is not a Japan-only extra, though its position at the end of the Japanese edition makes it look like one. Ward Records, the Japanese licensee, labels it a worldwide bonus track — the physical editions everywhere carry it, and Japan simply inherited it.
Santa Muerte in 2019 gave Sinner a permanent second lead voice for the first time: the Italian singer Giorgia Colleluori. In the label's own announcement Mat Sinner sets out the route she took into the band. He hired her first as a backing vocalist on Rock Meets Classic, the arena production he directs, then put her on stage for three older Sinner songs at concerts in Australia, Japan and Germany before making her a full member.
The lead guitar on "Born to Run", from the farewell album Boom Bang Goodbye, is played by Mathias "Don" Dieth, who was in Sinner in the 1980s. It is his first appearance on a Sinner studio recording in around forty years, since Comin' Out Fighting and Dangerous Charm — after which he left to become a founding member of U.D.O.
Touch of Sin 2, the 2013 record on which Sinner re-cut its own 1980s songs, exists because the Noise-era master tapes were gone. Mat Sinner said in an interview that he had been told the originals had mysteriously disappeared and were probably burned in what he pointedly called an accidental fire.
The last album was made the opposite way. Boom Bang Goodbye was recorded entirely remotely, every contributor working in his own home setup, because — as Mat Sinner told Metal Hammer — the budget to put everyone in one studio no longer exists. It is the exact reverse of the condition he had insisted on in 2013.
Brotherhood was finished without the man whose name is on the band. With the songs written and tracking due in May 2021, Mat Sinner was hospitalised with a pulmonary oedema and heart trouble. Guitarist Tom Naumann has said that Mat phoned him from there and handed him the job of completing the record, and that he felt deeply honoured to be asked.
In September 2025 a search engine's generated biography treated Mat Sinner as dead. The text was written throughout in the past tense, and its opening paragraph closed with the words "until his death in April 2023". He answered it with a photograph taken from the stage in Stuttgart, writing that he was standing there alive on 20 September 2025, playing the finest tour of his career.
Sinner's live history was built as a support act rather than as a headliner. The label's own account runs through the names in order: Mr. Big and Savatage in the mid-1990s, then Deep Purple after The Nature of Evil, then Ronnie James Dio after The End of Sanctuary.
The end of Sinner was announced by Mat Sinner himself in November 2025: he would give the remaining years of his musical career to Primal Fear, and the last record took its title from that statement. He has also told Metal Hammer that he had not intended to do anything more with Sinner at all, because his Primal Fear schedule was so full — the final album was never part of the plan.
No. 12, for Brotherhood in 2022, is the highest Sinner has ever placed on the official German album chart. The chart body's database holds seven Sinner albums in all, running from The Nature of Evil in 1998 to Boom Bang Goodbye in 2026; not one of the 1980s Noise-era records appears in it.
Every one of the seven Sinner albums that reached the official German chart is logged with exactly one week on it. That includes Brotherhood, which climbed to No. 12 and was gone the following week.
The farewell album has a Japanese edition. Ward Records issues Boom Bang Goodbye on 21 August 2026 as GQCS-91782, with a Japanese commentary booklet and translated lyrics, three weeks after the international release.
The last album takes its title from Mat Sinner's own parting words. The label's page quotes him saying "The last one turns off the lights" — and Boom Bang Goodbye is how that sentence finishes.
Ricky Warwick of Thin Lizzy and Black Star Riders sings "What Went Wrong" on Santa Muerte, and the connection came from a tour bus. In the label's announcement Mat Sinner recalls that the two spent hours sitting together while Rock Meets Classic was on the road, and became genuine friends.
Ronnie Romero, who sings the Santa Muerte single "Fiesta Y Copas", first caught Mat Sinner's ear in 2015 at a large festival in Italy, where Sinner's own Primal Fear and Romero's Spanish band Lords of Black shared the bill.
Santa Muerte reached No. 41 in Germany and No. 89 in Switzerland in 2019, and AFM Records announced it as the highest chart entry of the band's career. Brotherhood beat it three years later with No. 12.
"Death Letter" on Santa Muerte is a cover of a blues standard dating from 1965. AFM Records issued it as the album's third single.
Tequila Suicide, from 2017, carries guest appearances by Gus G of Firewind and Ozzy Osbourne's band, by Ricky Warwick, and by Pete Lincoln of Sweet. Mat Sinner and Dennis Ward produced it together.
Mat Sinner attached one condition to making Touch of Sin 2: the whole band had to shut itself in a studio and record the thing together, rather than each player sending files in from home. He was explicit that he would not do it any other way.
Sinner did not play South America or Russia until the touring cycle behind Crash & Burn in 2008. The band's own label flags it as the first time ever in their long-running career — more than a quarter of a century after they started.
The Deep Purple support tour that followed 1998's The Nature of Evil left an afterword. According to the band history published by Nuclear Blast, the label Sinner was on at the time, Ian Gillan thanked the band personally once the tour was over and crowned them the best special guests of the nineties.
The three years between The End of Sanctuary in 2000 and There Will Be Execution in 2003 went to the members' other bands. The label's history names where they went: Primal Fear, Saxon and Masterplan. Sinner's schedule bent around its players' other commitments more than once.
There Will Be Execution was recorded in 2003 at House of Music Studios in Winterbach, Germany. The line-up brought in Fritz Randow, formerly of Saxon, on drums, and put two guitarists who had both served in Primal Fear — Henny Wolter and Tom Naumann — side by side.
Mask of Sanity was cut at the Leon studio outside Stuttgart in 2006 by engineers Achim Köhler and Samson Geiger. Klaus Sperling, formerly of Primal Fear, played drums on it. It came out on MTM Music rather than on Nuclear Blast.
"Wait", the first single from the last album, was made cheerful on purpose. Mat Sinner said he wanted a positive good-time track, and that the political madness the world is living through does not need another depressing soundtrack. Michael Bormann sings it — the first time the two had worked together in about ten years.
Alongside Sinner, Mat Sinner has served as musical director of the European arena production Rock Meets Classic. Metal Hammer's 2016 live report calls him exactly that, and lists who his band and the Bohemian Symphony Orchestra Prague backed that night: Joey Tempest of Europe, Midge Ure, Doro Pesch, Scott Gorham and Ricky Warwick of Thin Lizzy, two members of Sweet, Steve Walsh of Kansas and Dan McCafferty of Nazareth.
Boom Bang Goodbye, the last studio album, entered the official German album chart at No. 28 in the week of 7 August 2026. Behind only Brotherhood's No. 12, that is the second-highest placing of a career spanning more than forty years.