Alcatraz Line up: 2022

Craig Locicero’s pedigree is well established: guitarist for Forbidden, one of the pioneering bands in the Bay Area thrash metal movement, and more recently guitarist for The Boneless Ones, Manmade God & SpiralArms. Locicero longed to do something that wasn’t tied to any genre and that’s when he began to put the pieces of Dress the Dead together. Many of those pieces came from Locicero’s musical past. The first piece was drums. In recent years, Locicero had rekindled his relationship with one-time Forbidden drummer Mark Hernandez, who played with the band from 2008-2011. The early chemistry was still there, and he had just the right feel for the music. Mark is one of the most well respected and versatile metal drummers to come out of the bay area having sat behind the kit with Testament, Vio-Lence, Social Unrest and Re-Ignition. Next up was bass. James Walker and Locicero played together in rock act Manmade God, which was signed by Rick Rubin to American Recordings in the early 2000s. The mix of creation between veteran bassist Walker and Locicero is instrumental in the band’s sonic assault and its groove. Listen to a song that is written by Walker, as he is notorious for writing a song within a song. With Peter Dolving (ex-The Haunted) on vocals, this version of Dress the Dead fine-tuned its sound and performed live at the end 2016, introducing everyone to the newest band formed by Locicero and this carefully selected group of veteran musicians. Peter eventually decided to return to his home in Europe and the search for a new vocalist was on. When Craig Locicero saw vocalist Kayla Dixon perform in San Francisco, he knew she had a promising future as a frontwoman. He didn’t know their musical paths would interweave not far down the road in Dress the Dead. Locicero originally formed Dress the Dead with Dolving in 2017. When Dolving left the group, the band struggled to find the right vocalist. While going through vocalist tryouts, Locicero received a text from Kayla Dixon, nearly a year from the day he saw her perform that night in SF. “It was 363 days exactly,” Locicero says. “Losing Peter was a complete shock to us because he was into it. Some of the people we tried out were good but didn't have what we were looking for… just not the right fit. All of a sudden, I get a text from Kayla. She’d been checking us out for months and was already a fan of the music.” A couple of days after that now legendary text message, Dixon sent Locicero a new version of the DtD song ‘1969’ with her vocals. He was floored. "It was like it was made for her. She seamlessly fit into the music. We haven’t needed to readjust. What having her in the band allows me to do is to not hold back and write anything I feel like writing, knowing that she can do it and sing without any limits.”