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SCORPIONS have unveiled the cover artwork for their new single, “Peacemaker”. The track, which was originally scheduled for release on October 21, will now arrive on November 4.

The band said: “Here it is: the Peacemaker Cover Artwork! This photo captures perfectly how we feel as a band. So excited for you all to hear the new single. Pre-save it now to hear an exclusive snippet of the song!”

“Peacemaker” is the first single from SCORPIONS’ 19th studio album, “Rock Believer”, which will be issued on February 11, 2022.

During the pandemic the band retreated to the studio in their German hometown in Hanover and started working on new songs.

“The album was written and recorded in the SCORPIONS DNA with core [Rudolf] Schenker/[Klaus] Meine compositions,” said singer Klaus Meine. “We recorded the album as a band live in one room, like we did in the ’80s.”

“Rock Believer” was recorded primarily at Peppermint Park Studios in Hannover, Germany and was mixed at the legendary Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany with engineer Michael Ilbert, who has earned multiple Grammy nominations for his mix work with producer Max Martin on albums by Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

SCORPIONS’ new album will mark their first release since 2017’s “Born To Touch Your Feelings – Best Of Rock Ballads”, which was an anthology of new and classic material.

SCORPIONS originally intended to record the new album in Los Angeles with producer Greg Fidelman, whose previous credits include SLIPKNOT and METALLICA. However, because of the pandemic, some of the initial work was done with Greg remotely, after which SCORPIONS opted to helm the recordings themselves with the help of their engineer Hans-Martin Buff.

Meine previously told Talking Metal that the goal with using Fidelman to produce “Rock Believer” was to bring “the old vibe from albums like ‘Blackout’, ‘Love At First Sting’ or even ‘Lovedrive’. We try to focus on those albums and this attitude,” he said. “If we get there, who knows — it’s so many years later. But it’s the spirit and it’s the whole vibe around this album. This time, the focus is on the harder songs.”

According to Meine, SCORPIONS’ new LP features “no outside writers at all,” unlike 2015’s “Return To Forever”, which was largely co-written by the album’s producers, Mikael Nord Andersson and Martin Hansen.

SCORPIONS will kick off their “Rock Believer” world tour in March 2022 in Las Vegas where the band will play nine shows as part of their residency at Planet Hollywood Hotel. Afterwards they will cross the Atlantic to Europe where they will play six concerts in France and six shows In Germany supported by Wolfgang Van Halen’s new band MAMMOTH WVH.

SCORPIONS’ last full-length collection of new recordings was the aforementioned “Return To Forever”, partially comprising songs the band had in the vault from the ’80s. It was the final recorded appearance of SCORPIONS’ longtime drummer James Kottak, who was dismissed from the band in September 2016. He has since been replaced by Mikkey Dee, formerly of MOTÖRHEAD.

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Alice Cooper is featured in a new commercial with Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield.

The commercial for Progressive’s popular “At Home With Baker Mayfield” campaign features Mayfield and his wife, Emily, living inside FirstEnergy Stadium, home of the Browns.

In “Package Mixup With Alice Cooper”, Mayfield brings a box that was wrongly delivered to him at the Stadium to its correct destination at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, which is within walking distance, located about two-tenths of a mile away. When Cooper answers the door, Mayfield says: “Hey, Baker from next door. I think I got one of your packages. I opened it by mistake. Mayfield then pulls out a big boot big, at which point Alice asks: “You’re sure they’re not yours?” “Pretty sure,” says Mayfield. “Online shopping… It’s my curse,” says Cooper. “You and me both,” replies Mayfield.

When the commercial was filmed in July, the Browns quarterback told the Associated Press that he knew only a little about Cooper before their first meeting, having previously heard the rocker’s classic song “School’s Out”. At the time, Mayfield said about Cooper: “Just an amazing person. Truly, not what I was expecting. ‘He’s a Detroit fan, which I didn’t know. But if you’re born there, you’ve got to be a Lions fan. He’s a fun guy who takes his work very seriously. He was practicing his lines and I thought it was cool to see someone at that level still taking it that seriously.”

Alice and his solo band played their first concert in a year and a half on September 17 at Ovation Hall at Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Cooper, a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee, usually spends up to six months a year on the road, bringing his iconic brand of rock psycho-drama to fans both old and new, enjoying it as much as the audience does. Known as the architect of shock rock, Cooper (in both the original Alice Cooper band and as a solo artist) has rattled the cages and undermined the authority of generations of guardians of the status quo, continuing to surprise fans and exude danger at every turn, like a great horror movie. Alice Cooper concerts remain a “not-to-be-missed” attraction.

Cooper’s universally acclaimed new album “Detroit Stories” is out now via earMUSIC. The record is a celebration of the sound and spirit of the golden era of Detroit rock, and debuted on the Billboard album sales chart at No. 1 upon release in February.

New supergroup CORRODED SPIRAL — comprised of SEPULTURA co-founder Igor “Iggor” Cavalera, Venezuelan electronic producer Cardopusher, and Dwid Hellion, founder of hardcore punk trailblazers INTEGRITY — will release its debut EP, “Ancient Nocturnal Summoning”, digitally on December 3 through Phantom Limb.

The trio’s debut release crosses the boundaries of new wave, black metal, hardcore, industrial and EBM, a sum of decades of experience and powerful musicality from bona fide giants of their respective fields. Its three members contribute not just stylistic influence but three unique voices and a boundless ocean of abilities.

“CORRODED SPIRAL is a collaborative creation of different ideas, pushing the limits of our outputs, puzzled together during this doomed time of isolation,” explains Cavalera. “An aural assault.”

Listen to “Forgotten Ether”, the first taster from the EP, below. The uncompromising track evolves from air raid wails and inhuman screaming to tribal percussion and piercing squeals, its merciless pressure always threatening to detonate deep within the brain…

“Ancient Nocturnal Summoning” captures the intensity, horror and supernatural dread of its title. Its darkness is more creative and more demanding than distorted riffs or blast beats; instead, it is raw, spiritual, apocalyptic, and occasionally illuminated with sparks of melody that shimmer within a suffocating blackness. A seething tension that excavates deep, dark fissures of the soul. Title track “Ancient Nocturnal Summoning” haunts such recesses, its ghostly vocal lines drowning beneath howling sirens of broken synthesis and a relentless industrial beat. “Through The Eyes of Madness” invokes insanity with billowing ash clouds of noise and static, a crushing, doom-laden descent into terror destined to annihilate speaker systems. While “Resulting Fragments Splinter Existence” runs like a destroyed new wave piece, a departure from the sonic obliteration of the previous track but an intense experience in a very different way. Hellish growls underline mutated synth arps, over a beat that could be danceable if it were not so claustrophobic.

“Ancient Nocturnal Summoning” track listing:

01. Ancient Nocturnal Summoning
02. Through The Eyes Of Madness
03. Resulting Fragments Splinter Existence
04. Forgotten Ether

Listen to track “Forgotten Ether” below.

Igor left SEPULTURA in June 2006 due to “artistic differences.” His departure from the band came five months after he announced that he was taking a break from SEPULTURA’s touring activities to spend time with his second wife and their son (who was born in January 2006).

In 1996, Igor’s brother, frontman Max Cavalera, exited SEPULTURA after the rest of the band split with Max’s wife Gloria as their manager.

For a decade and a half, Igor has been part of the MIXHELL DJ/hip-hop/electro project with his wife Laima Leyton.

Two years ago, Igor teamed up with Wayne Adams (BIG LAD, DEATH PEDALS, JOHNNY BROKE) to form the PETBRICK project. The band’s debut album, “I”, was released in October 2019 via Closed Casket Activities in the U.S.

Igor’s other current musical projects include CAVALERA CONSPIRACY (alongside Max) and SOULWAX.

Venezuela’s Cardopusher (producer Luis Garban) is a collaborator of Arca, Boys Noize and Rosalía, among others. His pursuit of uncompromising production and pounding rhythms stems from a background in rave culture and an early immersion in Caracas’s underground electronic scene.

Belgium-based U.S. musician Dwid Hellion is known for his work with peerless early hardcore / metal sonic explorers INTEGRITY, paving a path for generations of bands to follow in entwining their battery with elements of noise, industrial and experimental music. Dwid also produces “apocalyptic harsh noise” under his Psywarfare solo alias since the 1990s.
Ancient Nocturnal Summoning by Corroded Spiral

Till Lindemann, industrial metal genius, frontman and voice of RAMMSTEIN, and three-time ECHO Award winner, will embark on a solo European tour, dubbed “Ich Hasse Kinder” (English translation: “I Hate Kids”), in January.

So far, the following shows have been announced:

Jan. 18 – Kiev, Ukraine @ Stereo Plaza
Jan. 20 – Bratislava, Slovakia @ EXPO-Aréna
Jan. 22 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Tipsport Arena
Jan. 23 – Tallinn, Estonia @ Tondiraba Ice Hall
Jan. 26 – Novossibirsk, Russia @ Mvk “Novosibirsk Ekspotsentr”
Jan. 28 – Moscow, Russia @ Adrenaline Stadium

This past June, Lindemann released a short movie titled “Ich Hasse Kinder”. The film, which was directed by Serghey Grey and produced by Lindemann and Anar Reiband, can be seen below.

The “Ich Hasse Kinder” short movie arrived a month after the release of Till’s single of the same name. In May, Lindemann also issued a music video for the orchestral version of his “Lubimiy Gorod” solo single, sung entirely in Russian, for the original motion picture “Devyatayev”, which came out in late April. Translated as “Beloved Town”, the piano-led ballad was composed by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky (lyrics) and Nikita Bogoslovsky. It was originally performed by Mark Bernes in 1939.

“Devyatayev”, directed by Timur Bekmambetov, is about the Soviet pilot Mikhail Devyatayev, who was captured by Germany during World War II. He leads an escape from a concentration camp on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea by hijacking an aircraft.

LINDEMANN, the project featuring vocalist Till and Swedish producer and multi-instrumentalist Peter Tägtgren (HYPOCRISY, PAIN), released a concert film, “Live In Moscow”, on May 21 on Blu-ray. The set includes professionally filmed video footage of LINDEMANN’s March 15, 2020 performance at Moscow, Russia’s VTB Arena.

Last November, Lindemann and Tägtgren confirmed that they were ending their collaboration on the LINDEMANN project.

LINDEMANN’s second album, “F & M”, was released in November 2019. The follow-up to 2015’s “Skills In Pills” was once again produced and mixed by Tägtgren.

“Skills In Pills” reached gold status in Germany and was entirely in English. On the second opus, Lindemann went back to singing exclusively in German.

LINDEMANN had received some criticism due to its use of pornography during its second album cycle, with the music video for “Platz Eins” described by one site as “full-on art porn — slick and stylish, weird and experimental, and definitely X-rated.”

This past February, RAMMSTEIN keyboardist Christian “Flake” Lorenz confirmed that the band recorded a new studio album during the coronavirus pandemic.

Last October, RAMMSTEIN revealed that it had returned to La Fabrique studios in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in the south of France. At the time, the band wrote in a social media post: “Sadly no tour this year – but it’s great to be back in the studio!”

RAMMSTEIN’s seventh, untitled album came out in May 2019 via UME/Spinefarm in Europe and Caroline Records in the U.S. The band’s first studio disc since 2009’s “Liebe Ist Für Alle Da” debuted at No. 1 on the album charts in 14 countries and was the band’s tenth No. 1 in Germany.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH has announced its first European tour since early 2020. Kicking off at Nova Rock festival in Austria in June, the Las Vegas-based metallers will perform throughout the continent, bringing their incendiary shows to festivals and arenas in 19 cities in 16 countries.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH European tour dates 2022:

Jun. 12 – Nova Rock, Nickelsdorf, Austria
Jun. 14 – Sparkassenpark, Moenchengladbach, Germany
Jun. 15 – Wuhlheide, Berlin, Germany
Jun. 17 – Hellfest, Clisson, France
Jun. 18 – Graspop Metal Meeting, Dessel, Belgium
Jun. 20 – Ahoy, Rotterdam, Holland
Jun. 22 – Prague Rocks, Prague, Czech Republic
Jun. 24 – Download, Hockenheim Ring, Germany
Jun. 25 – Tons Of Rock, Halden, Norway
Jun. 27 – Goransson Arena, Sandviken, Sweden
Jun. 28 – Royal Arena, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jun. 29 – Frauenfeld Rocks, Frauenfeld, Switzerland
Jul. 02 – Tasmajdan, Belgrade, Serbia
Jul. 05 – Budapest Arena, Budapest, Hungary
Jul. 11 – Saku Arena, Tallinn, Estonia
Jul. 12 – A2, St. Petersburg, Russia
Jul. 08 – 26th – Parklive Festival, Moscow, Russia
Jul. 16 – U Park Festival, Kiev, Ukraine

MEGADETH, which previously joined FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH as special guest on the latter band’s headlining tour across Europe in early 2020, will again provide support in Berlin, Moenchengladbach and Rotterdam.

VIP packages are available now and general onsale will take place at 10 a.m. local time on Friday, October 29.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH performed for the first time in a year and a half on August 20 at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa.

The band recently entered the Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, Nevada to begin recording its new album for a 2022 release. In addition, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH has commenced re-recording its debut LP, 2007’s “The Way Of The Fist”, for its 15th anniversary.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s upcoming album will be the group’s first with its latest addition, renowned British virtuoso Andy James, who replaced Jason Hook last year. James was previously featured on “Broken World”, a song that was included on the second installment of FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s greatest-hits collection, “A Decade Of Destruction – Volume 2”, which came out last fall.

Each of FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s first six albums — “The Way of the Fist”, 2009’s “War Is The Answer”, 2011’s “American Capitalist”, 2013’s “The Wrong Side Of Heaven And The Righteous Side of Hell, Volume 1” and “Volume 2”, and 2015’s “Got Your Six” — has gone either gold or platinum in the U.S.

The band has had two dozen songs hit the Top 10 on the Mainstream Rock or Hard Rock Digital charts, starting with “The Bleeding”. FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s 2010 cover of BAD COMPANY’s “Bad Company” was certified platinum for accumulating a million certified units.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s No. 1 hits include “Coming Down”, “Lift Me Up”, “Battle Born”, “Wash It All Away”, “Sham Pain”, “When The Seasons Change” and “Blue On Black”.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH’s most recent album, 2020’s “F8”, debuted at No. 1 on rock charts around the world, with Top 10 mainstream chart debuts in the U.S., Austria, Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and more. “F8” features No. 1 hit singles “Inside Out”, “A Little Bit Off”, “Living The Dream” and “Darkness Settles In”.

June 6, 2022 marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most infamous, notorious, controversial heavy metal bands in the world… W.A.S.P. So join W.A.S.P. for this very special 40th-anniversary world tour that kicks off in Milan, Italy on March 18, 2022. This first leg of dates will see the band hit Italy, Spain, Ireland, North Ireland, United Kingdom, Scotland, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, Romania and Bulgaria. More dates and a U.S. tour will be announced.

W.A.S.P. leader Blackie Lawless states about the tour: “For the W.A.S.P. 40th-anniversary world tour, we’re going back to the beginning. We’re taking the show back to where it all started. Complete with all the fire and all the blood that shocked the world the first time. We only did this type of show on the first world tour and never did it again…until now! I’m gonna scream and I’m gonna bleed, ’cause I wanna be somebody! We’re taking everybody back…back to the beginning!”

W.A.S.P. “40 Years Live” world tour 2022:

Mar. 18 – Milan, Live Club
Mar. 19 – Padova, Padova Hall
Mar. 23 – Bilbao, Santana 27
Mar. 24 – Murcia, Sala Gamma 3
Mar. 25 – Barcelona, Razzmatazz 1
Mar. 26 – Madrid, La Riviera
Mar. 30 – Dublin, Vicar St.
Mar. 31 – Belfast, Ulster Hall
Apr. 01 – Wolverhampton, KK’s Steel Mill
Apr. 02 – Manchester, Academy
Apr. 03 – Nottingham, Rock City
Apr. 05 – Glasgow, O2 Academy
Apr. 06 – Newcastlee, O2 City Hall
Apr. 07 – Bristol, O2 Academy
Apr. 08 – London, Rou-House
Apr. 09 – Eindhoven, Effenaar
Apr. 10 – Copenhagen, Amager Bio
Apr. 12 – Malmö, Moriskan
Apr. 13 – Huskvarna, Folkets Park
Apr. 14 – Sundsvall, Sporthallen
Apr. 15 – Umeå, Idun
Apr. 16 – Oulu, Teatria
Apr. 17 – Tampere, Pakkahuone
Apr. 18 – Helsinki, Kulttuuritalo
Apr. 20 – Gävle, Gasklockan
Apr. 21 – Eskilstuna, Lokomotivet
Apr. 22 – Örebro, Conventum
Apr. 23 – Karlstad, Nöjesfabriken
Apr. 25 – Oslo, Rockefeller
Apr. 28 – Stockholm, Stora Fållan
Apr. 29 – Norrköping, Arbis
Apr. 30 – Gothenburg, Trädgårn
May 01 – Bremen, Aladin
May 02 – Mannheim, Capitol
May 04 – Saarbrücken, Garage
May 05 – Oberhausen, Turbinenhalle
May 07 – Geiselwind, Music Halle
May 08 – Munich, Backstage Werk
May 17 – Bucharest, Arenele Romane
May 18 – Sofia, Universidada Sports Hall

Few bands in the history of rock ‘n’ roll have ever incited the love, the hate, the raw emotional effect this band has had on the world. From the very beginning, in the small venues of Los Angeles, California, and later to the numerous countries worldwide that banned these winged assassins from performing live, the band’s unique style of shock and rock caused religious organizations, local city councils, parlaments, and the Washington D.C. Senate to hold hearings in an effort to bar this group from selling records and trashing stages everywhere they played.

The band’s founding member, Blackie Lawless, has led the group as its lead vocalist and primary songwriter since its beginning. His unique brand of visual, social and political comment took the group to worldwide heights and sold millions of records alongside a legacy of sold out shows across the globe for four decades.

Joined by bassist Mike Duda and guitarist Doug Blair, whose tenures in the band span 26 and 18 years respectively, along with drummer extraordinaire Aquiles Priester, Lawless will take the band and the fans back to where it all started. Complete with the stage show extravaganza that many fans never saw live.

Headier moments of psychedelics and progressive-metal noodling have always been baked into MASTODON’s sound, going back to the more overtly doomier days that birthed their 2002 debut, “Remission”. The last decade of the band’s career has seen the Atlanta, GA quartet wade further into those more adventurous waters. What has helped MASTODON remain a formidably enduring metallic presence — where lesser bands might have tripped and stumbled — is the fact that those forays into flightier moments of musical fancy are still undertaken in the service of keeping the band’s sound grounded in more ominous territory. The group’s progressive-metal indulgences aren’t DREAM THEATER’s technical showcases, nor do they evoke modern-day OPETH’s flowery atmosphere, but the end results are still incredible displays of metallic aura. And “Hushed and Grim”, the band’s ninth album, comes off as the ultimate fitting of the puzzle pieces that MASTODON has been arranging during their later years.

“Hushed and Grim” is a dense 86-minute, deep dive that delivers a listening experience that is at times dizzying and manic, other times brooding and introspective, but ultimately remains moody and haunting. The powerful drum-roll from Brann Dailor and swirling riffs that launch the album on “Pain With an Anchor”, jazzier guitar solos dropped during the back half of “The Crux”, and the GOJIRA-esque combination of hypnosis and power of “Sickle and Peace” all converge early to lay a solid foundation for the winding trip that is about to come. Longtime MASTODON fans who like to get a moshpit going at the live show will still find plenty of reasons to do so if the band chooses to integrate into their set list the forceful crunch of “More Than I Could Chew”, the fast-paced chaos of “Pushing the Tides”, and the whirlwind thrash that launches “Savage Lands”.

The most engaging aspect of MASTODON’s 2021 sound that really keeps the proceedings of “Hushed and Grim” rooted in emotional heaviness is bassist Troy Sanders’s vocal performance. Whether it’s by design or the natural strain of age, the tortured howls of his sound result in what may be his most compelling vocal performance. Sanders rasps work in conjunction with hearty bellows from guitarist Brent Hinds to lend a weight that keeps the dark blues-rock balladry of “The Beast” from coming off as a maudlin farce. Sanders’s weathered shrieks and emotive keyboard work also bolster “Skeleton of Splendor”‘s spooky synth-prog as well as “Dagger”‘s thunderous torment. Dailor also impresses with soaring melodic lead vocals on “Teardrinker”‘s relatively straight-forward rock, but Sanders’s beautiful throat-shredding performance on “Gigantium”‘s epic closing comedown can’t help but leave the lasting impression after initial listens are completed.

The last decade of MASTODON releases have seen the band steer their songwriting towards more musically explorative waters. Every subsequent full-length album ends up being more and more of a winding path of twists and turns as start-to-finish listening experiences. The entirety of “Hushed and Grim” makes a strong case that their latest is the band’s ultimate masterpiece, successfully steering into every single curve that is laid down on the road ahead of them.

During an interview with TWISTED SISTER bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza’s Internet show “22 Now”, former DREAM THEATER and current THE WINERY DOGS drummer Mike Portnoy once again spoke about a hypothetical scenario in which he would be chosen to tour with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson as the replacement for late RUSH drummer Neil Peart. Asked if he would be interested in taking that gig, Portnoy said: “Of course. That would be a dream to play with those guys. But I don’t wanna see the Blabbermouth headline right now, me thinking that I deserve the gig. I’m not saying that. You’re asking me a question. Hypothetically, of course, it would be a dream come true. Neil was my hero, and always will be, and Geddy and Alex are as well.

“I don’t think in a million years they’ll play without him; I really don’t,” he continued. “But in a hypothetical dream scenario, I mean, come on — of course. But I don’t think in a zillion years it will happen. But it’s a nice dream to hypothetically wonder about. But I honestly don’t think it would ever happen. But who knows? You never know.

“As much as hypothetically it would be fun, it would be amazing, it would also be an impossible role to fill,” Portnoy added. “It’s a no-win situation. Really, it would be impossible, ’cause his fans are as obsessive as they get — and count me amongst them. So, yeah, that would be a tough one.”

Mike also talked about RUSH’s final tour which concluded at the Forum in Los Angeles on August 1, 2015. Peart indicated at the time that he wanted to retire while he was still able to play well, along with a desire to spend more time at home with his young daughter.

“They went out on such a high,” Portnoy said. “Their last tour was a farewell tour. I don’t think anybody expected Neil to pass, but they wanted to stop touring, so they really went out with such an amazing tour. That tour was just so well done, so perfectly executed, and they went out with all three of them still at the top of their game. So I give them all the credit in the world for that. It’s just sad that Neil didn’t get many years to enjoy the retirement before he got sick. That saddens me.”

A year and a half ago, Portnoy spoke to World Prog-Nation about how Peart influenced him on a musical and personal level. He said: “I spent 20, 30 years idolizing him and being his biggest fan. And all those years, it was mainly the drum kit — the drum kit was such a fascination for me. He always built such amazing kits and put so much thought into it. I’d always get the tour programs where he’d write about the kit and what the new things were on it, and I would just look at those photos. Most other kids were looking at Playboy centerfolds; I was looking at Neil Peart drum kits. And then, obviously, his playing — it goes without saying. I learned how to really develop parts and orchestrate drum parts to build and change and develop within the song. So that was the biggest stuff for me as a fan. And then later on, once I got to know him, I was so inspired by what a gracious person he was.”

Mike added: “He had this reputation that he was sort of quiet and isolated and private, and he was, and it was very important for him to guard that. But once you were somehow allowed into that inner cicle, he was always so sweet and kind and generous. He’d always send me holiday e-mails and he would always send me his new books and stuff like that. It was a relationship that I’ll always cherish and I was honored to have.”

RUSH announced Peart’s passing on January 10, 2020, setting off shockwaves and an outpouring of grief from fans and musicians all over the world.

22 NOW | Ep. 80: Mike Portnoy

Mark sits down with special guest Mike Portnoy for a brand new episode of 22 NOW!

Posted by Area 22 Productions on Tuesday, September 21, 2021

On Saturday, October 23, Seattle native Ann Wilson of the rock band HEART belted out a rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the first home game ever at the new Climate Pledge Arena for the Seattle Kraken franchise. Video of her performance is available below.

Wilson previously sang the U.S. national anthem at festivities at the Draft Theater in Cleveland in April as part of the NFL Draft Concert Series presented by Bose.

Two months ago, Wilson and her solo band THE AMAZING DAWGS released a live EP called “Howlen Live”. Joining Ann in the group are Tom Bukovac on lead guitar, Tony Lucido on bass, Paul Moak on guitar and keyboards, and Sean Lane on drums.

In April, Ann released another new single, “Black Wing”. It is one of several songs the HEART frontwoman recorded last fall in Seattle with the help of local musicians, including current HEART bassist Andy Stoller and keyboardist Dan Walker. In addition to “Black Wing”, Wilson recorded “Tender Heart” as well as covers of Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now” and ALICE IN CHAINS’ “Rooster”, all three of which have already been released as singles, plus another original, “The Hammer”, which came out in February.

Earlier in the year, Ann said in an interview that there are no plans for HEART to work on new music in the immediate future.

HEART toured North America in the summer of 2019 after a nasty split that kept the Wilson sisters estranged for three years.

Ann’s 2018 solo album, “Immortal”, contained cover versions of classic songs by artists who have passed away.