Texas Frightmare Weekend, a horror convention held near Dallas since 2006, has booked Bill Ward and Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath and Bruce Dickinson and Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden for its 2027 edition, from 28 to 30 May at the Irving Convention Center.
Four men from the two bands that made British heavy metal, appearing at a horror convention rather than a festival, is a reasonable measure of where the genre's founding generation now spends its time. Ward last played with Sabbath in 2012 and McBrain retired from Maiden's stage in 2024, so for two of the four this is the only touring left.
The pairing is less arbitrary than it looks. Sabbath took their name from a horror film and built an entire genre out of its atmosphere, and the convention's own announcement leans on exactly that, crediting Butler's bass and lyrics with tying metal to horror in the first place.
Dickinson and McBrain appear as the Maiden half of the bill, with the convention calling them an iconic frontman and four decades of drumming.