Ann Willson Reveals Cancer Diagnosis in a Letter to Fans, Heart Cancels Remaining 2024 Tour Dates


Photo 33821863 | Ann Wilson Heart © Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

 

Ann Willson, the legendary lead singer of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame band has cancer. She made the announcement in a letter to fans on social media. She recently had a surgery, that led to the cancelation of their summer headline tour of Europe. Now the group has canceled their remaining 2024 “Royal Flush” tour dates as well. Ann expects to be recover by 2025, and signed off in her note to and “this is only a pause!” We wish her a speedy recovery. Continue reading


Watch Nirvana and Heart’s Ann And Nancy Wilson Receive Lifetime Achievement Awards From The Recording Academy


  

The Recording Academy (a.k.a The Grammy Awards) honored the surviving members of Nirvana and Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson with the Recording Academy’s 2023 lifetime achievement award at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles on February 4th. Other honorees included Bobby McFerrin, Ma Rainey, Nile Rodgers, and Slick Rick. The ceremony – the Special Merit Awards ceremony, was presented the day before the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. The lifetime achievement award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy’s national trustees to performers “who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.” Watch the ceremony now! 

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CONCERT REVIEW: Ann Wilson Live at Sony Hall  


 

In a time where people tend to throw around the word “legend”, I had the great fortune to experience an incredibly intimate evening with a true legend at Sony Hall last week. Ann Wilson, the undeniable and unmistakable voice of Heart, delivered the goods on the New York City stop of her tour. She’s supporting her new release Fierce Bliss. The album, like so many others to come out this year, was a product of the abundance of time off courtesy of Covid. Ann used her time very wisely and enlisted the help of a wide variety of heavy hitters including Vince Gill, Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. 

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Korn, Metallica, Mastodon, Billy Corgan to Pay Tribute to Alice In Chains at MoPop Awards Ceremony


Alice In Chains is being honored by Seattle’s MoPop Museum of Pop Culture on December 1st, and the band will be celebrated by a cadre of their peers, as well as hold their first performance of 2020. Korn, Metallica, Mastodon, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction, and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana are among the artists who will take part in virtual tribute performances when AIC is presented with this year’s Museum Of Pop Culture (MoPOP) Founders Award. The full list of presenters (virtually) is listed below. Continue reading


Heart ft. Dave Navarro Share Live Video For “Bébé Le Strange”


Heart has shared another live performance clip from their upcoming live DVD/Blu-ray Live in Atlantic City. Joined by Jane’s Addiction/Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro, watch a killer rendition of their classic hit ‘Bébé Le Strange’. Live in Atlantic City is out January 25 via earMUSIC. Pre-orders are live at the link below now. Continue reading


Heart To Release All-Star Package “Live In Atlantic City” Next Month


Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductees Heart, featuring sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson are finally releasing their excellent 2006 live special as an album/deluxe LP/CD/DVD/BluRay package as Live In Atlantic City. Originally aired as VH1 Decades Rock Live, the newly mixed and mastered special will be released on January 25 via earMUSIC. Watch a performance video of ‘Lost Angel’ right now!Continue reading


Lucifer – Lucifer II


Whilst there is no pre-requisite for nominative determinism in music when you call your band Lucifer, you do set a bit of an expectation that your sound is going to, at the very least, a bit dark and evil. No one seems to have told Lucifer this. Their second album of what can only be loosely regarded as Occult Rock weaves its (black) magic in a way that is as unexpected as it is compelling.Continue reading


Watch Jerry Cantrell And Ann Wilson Pay Tribute To Chris Cornell At The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame


At last night’s Rock And Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony, Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains joined Ann Wilson of Heart to pay tribute to their late friend and Seattle brethren Chris Cornell. Cornell passed away on May 18th, 2017. Watch a video of them covering Soundgarden classic ‘Black Hole Sun’. Continue reading


Video: Heart New Album Teaser Featuring Metallica Singer James Hetfield


James Hetfield of Metallica,, by Victoria Anderson

James Hetfield of Metallica,, by Victoria Anderson

Heart’s forthcoming new album of re-imagined versions of older material Beautiful Broken is due out July 8th. The album features Metallica’s James Hetfield backing up Ann Wilson on the song ‘Fanatic’. The teaser for the album is available at this link or below.

 

Heart’s Nancy Wilcson comments on the new album:

“There is really a seventies feel to this record both in the sound, and the way we got to the emotional core of each song. We picked songs that we always wanted to re-do, plus we’ve added three new tracks. On both new and old, we have the band playing together the way we used to. This is classic HEART.”

Heart Beautiful Broken album cover ghostcultmag


The Agonist – Eye of Providence


In case you haven’t been following the story of The Agonist in the last year, they were in the unenviable position of making a change in the voice and face of the band when mainstay Alissa White-Gluz was hand-picked as the new Arch Enemy singer. Even more tricky… the band seemed to not want her to go, as an upstart band on the same label as Arch Enemy, so you might say the band was in a perilous situation. On top of that, the band was facing pivotal album number four in their career, so to say they had a challenge before them on many fronts, would be an understatement.

However, the band triumphantly rose up and actually created a release with Eye of Providence (Century Media) that stands on equal footing with the bands finest work to date. New singer Vicky Psarakis added last summer injected a her own style, while not changing what the bands make-up musically was at all. Her screaming is on par with White-Gluz, with a brassy contralto, mid-range singing voice; not unlike the best female rock singers in history such as Ann Wilson, Pat Benatar or Linda Perry. This gives Psarakis a grit to her delivery that adds to the emotion of the tracks. Many of the hallmarks of the bands’ past are present on Eye… : anthemic metalcore songs, guitar wizardry, killer double-kick beats, and the pristine production of of long-time producer Christian Donaldson (Crypstopsy).

And the songs! This album has strong, well-written tracks, each with their own identity, but firmly in the tradition they have had. From the blistering opener ‘Gates of Horn and Ivory,’ ‘My Witness, Your victim’, ‘I Endevour’, ‘Perpetual Notion’, ‘A Necessary Evil’ and many more, this album runs the gamut from thrash, prog and rock over and over again. Most of the album carries the positive and impassioned messages associated with them. Acknowledging that it is really hard to lose a singer, especially one so popular with fans, The Agonist has surely proved a lot of doubters wrong here.

8.5/10

KEITH CHACHKES