Vinnie Colla had already considered giving up music when he heard about the audition for Inglorious , a rising star in British hard rock, from a friend. Described by Brian May as "a powerful new Deep Purple " and as the best in England "since Led Zeppelin " by producer Kevin Shirley , the band lost three members at once on the eve of starting a tour.
With no time to record the three videos requested for the bassist position due to his demanding job at a transportation company, Colla sent only two – and was approved by Nathan James , vocalist and leader of Inglorious, in less than 10 minutes, even before meeting his future bandmates in person. It was November 2018 and the tour would take place in January of the following year, shortly after the release of Ride To Nowhere , the last album with the previous lineup.
The meeting with the other members, including the also newly arrived Danny Dela Cruz and Dan Stevens , only happened on the day of the official announcement of the new lineup, as Colla recounted in an interview with Wikimetal . “I met the guys there, like, 'Hi, how's it going? Nice to meet you, I'm the new bassist,'” he joked. “From then on, we met a few times to take pictures and then went straight to rehearsals. We were a week away from the tour and nobody had ever played together before.”
Phil Beaver 's choices proved spot-on from the very first chord of that magical rehearsal. From then on, Inglorious spent almost a year on the road playing shows across Europe, the United States, and festivals like Rock the Castle (Italy) and Tons of Rock (Norway). On one of those occasions, Vinnie crossed paths with Paul Stanley of Kiss backstage at Graspop (Belgium). “I’m really living a dream,” he said. “I looked at his face… And you know how El Chavo freezes up? I froze. He must have thought, ‘Poor guy, he has mental problems.’ I couldn’t even talk to him.”
While Vinnie's performances weren't always the best in encounters with idols – and who can judge? – the band's chemistry on stage proved to longtime fans the power of the new lineup. Despite the veiled ill will of some journalists, who seem to deliberately ignore the performance of the band's only foreigner while expressing pride in seeing other Brits on stage, the objective was sealed with We Will Ride (2021), their fourth studio album and the first with the new members. “Some people said, 'It works for Inglorious covers, now I want to see the next album,'” the Brazilian recalled. “When we released the album, a lot of people were quiet.”
Recorded during the first wave of the pandemic, the creative process took place via messaging apps and Zoom calls. Each member showed their ideas to Nathan and developed what the singer approved. In the studio, no one met, despite the routine of COVID-19 tests. With producer Romesh Gogandoda , who worked with Bring Me The Horizon and Bullet For My Valentine , the band released a powerful album that shows a solid future ahead.
Anyone who thinks that Vinicius, the bassist's birth name, has only just begun his journey to stardom is mistaken. Before suddenly stepping onto the world stage with Inglorious, Vinnie had already been named by Veja magazine as one of the "rockstars of São Paulo's nightlife" with the band Insônica , where he stayed for 15 years.
Interested in music since childhood, thanks to the influence of family members, it didn't take long for Vinnie to fall in love with rock and dream of the dangerous life of the idols who decorated the walls of his room in his adolescence. He started with the guitar, tried the keyboard, but would end up with the bass. "The story of every bassist is the same, they may say otherwise, but everyone plays bass because there were no bassists," he said. "I always liked bass, I was a fan of Cliff Burton in Metallica , and Steve Harris in Iron Maiden ."
He even started law school, but not even his parents' advice was enough to derail him from the path of rock. "I'll never be a professional if I treat this as a hobby," he explained to his mother. The success of Insônica's original cover songs in the most popular bars in downtown São Paulo left no room for complaint: their success grew, and soon they were playing 220 shows a year on the city's nightlife circuit. "I was living a dream, making a living from music, earning money. I was single, young, picking up women, I was happy," he recalled. "We developed to play on different stages, for different audiences, [we had] an extensive repertoire, and it was all rock."
As time went on, the lack of audience engagement after the release of the band's first album of original material began to make Vinnie question things. "Brazil is quite complicated for this kind of thing," he lamented. "The dream of a musician, at least for me, has always been to make my own music and not constantly do reinterpretations of others. There's a part of you as a musician that's suffering and dying. I was completely fed up with the São Paulo nightlife."
In 2010, the dream of restarting his life and career in another country began to take shape. After recording some tracks for the artist Tsubasa as a remote session musician, Colla was invited to record a DVD in Japan. The nagging feeling grew stronger after visiting London, the birthplace of the musician's main influences, such as Whitesnake and Led Zeppelin . Four years later, coincidentally the year Inglorious was formed, the Brazilian moved permanently to the English capital, but decided to take a break from music. "I needed to reset and understand what I wanted."
When Vinnie decided to start looking for new opportunities in music, he came across some "bizarre" ads on specialized websites. "Looking for a bass player, doesn't need to be a great player, but needs to have a good look and nice hair," one ad read.
In a more competitive environment, with a much higher number of musicians per capita, the bassist confessed that he had already become discouraged when he heard about the audition to join Inglorious. “I was quite discouraged, actually. There comes a point when you've been living abroad for a long time, you're tired, working with heavy loads, I even thought about giving up,” Colla said. “I left a good status in São Paulo, earning money, living well, to come to London to carry boxes and live in a room in a shared house.”
Even so, it would be impossible for a talented artist passionate about music to abandon their dream, especially living in a place where music is in the air. “There are some places where rock is dead; nowadays everything is very fleeting, especially in Brazil,” he observed. “In England, rock never died. What style of music do we have here? It’s rock! They never strayed far from rock.”
When he joined Inglorious, Colla confirmed what he had been observing from the outside: the British preference for original music and the appreciation of the local scene by the public, who buy VIP tour packages and sell out merchandise in minutes.
Currently, the Brazilian is fully integrated into the group and is already working on a new project with the band, the cover album Heroine , featuring only versions by female vocalists . The bassist has found a place of balance and fertile ground for his undeniable talent after a peculiar journey from his first metal band to the stage alongside Inglorious, in which persistence, love for music, and courage served as his compass.
“People nowadays are very afraid to try. I have millions of friends, everyone started playing around back then, in their teens, and it was everyone's dream to have a band, play, and be famous. What made the difference was who had the courage to keep playing and who didn't,” he observed. “If you really have a dream, you have to go after it, keep following it. And don't be afraid.”