Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Jorn
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2012
Runtime: 55:05
Rating: 3.5/5
Jorn are back with a new studio album! It’s the band of the great singer Jorn Lande, and it’s their seventh. It arrives three years after »Spirit Black« (2009), and Jorn Lande certainly didn’t sit on his hands in between. There was the Jorn »best of« »Dukebox« (2009), then a Jorn album dedicated to the late idol and vocal wizard of metal Ronnie James Dio, simply titled »Dio« (2010), and a new live Jorn album, »Live In Black » (2011). In 2010, two more albums came out in parallel, both featuring Jorn Lande on vocals: the Allen/Lande project’s »The Showdown« and the power metallers Masterplan’s »Time To Be King«. That tells you just how endlessly prolific an artist Jorn Lande is. Anyone would want him as the singer in their band. He’s one of the most respected rock and metal vocalists of the third generation.
»Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« keeps up the old-school tradition of Jorn’s earlier work. Heavy rock, hard rock, soaked in the magic of Jorn Lande’s dominant singing and his one-of-a-kind vocal approach, which once again does nothing to hide his obsession with Ronnie James Dio. Needless to say, there are moments on the album where it’s easy to mistake Jorn for David Coverdale (in his good vocal years). The gorgeous ballad Black Morning, with a bit of bluesy finesse woven in, will floor you all over again with the way Jorn Lande wrings out David Coverdale-style sentiment from his throat.
On the hunt for heaviness, though, the new album holds back a bit this time and leans more toward the tradition of old-school rock. In rock terms, it’s even the “easiest” Jorn album since the debut »Starlight« (2001). The album gives that impression right from the opener, My Road, built on a slow tempo and followed by three mid-paced tracks. On the flip side, that sets the stage for a rhythm section in no hurry to go anywhere, ideal for the big sensitive side of the vocal performance that runs through everything this fine singer does. Lande ripens like good old wine from album to album. The older he gets, the sweeter he is. Like a yellow muscat.
Jorn Lande decided to cover Christopher Cross’s big hit Ride Like A Wind, which is very well known to fans of the heavy metal legends Saxon. He gave it a hard rock spin on the original. It sounds very raw, with no extra ornaments or cosmetic (studio) polish. So there are no harmonized vocal lines wrapping around the lead vocal, which the Saxon version has plenty of. Ride Like A Wind keeps the raw, stripped-down, live “in your face” production of Jorn’s hard rock jurisdiction. Still, the track fails to grab your attention, especially if you know the Saxon take on the original, which hits a lot harder. It’s too close to Saxon. The distortion and the melodic vocals just create that feeling. Maybe he should have handed it to the “notorious country orcs” Hayseed Dixie, who would have shocked everyone by turning it into a banjo march.
Chains Around You is an uptempo number, sitting at track no. 5, and it’s one of the faster songs on the album. The arrangement template comes straight from the foundational works of Rainbow and Deep Purple, and the riff is a slightly upside-down guitar phrase from the Rainbow song Kill the King. The World I See is dark as hell. It could easily have landed on a Black Sabbath album from the Tony Martin era. It’s a gorgeous semi-ballad, a sort of mini-epic stuffed with pomp, and it contrasts perfectly with the rest of the album on the songwriting side. An expected move from Jorn Lande.
The second cover on the album is the Masterplan song Time To Be King, from the band’s self-titled studio album that came out in 2010. Jorn Lande cut a hard rock arrangement of it. A dark atmosphere hangs over the track. Lande says that when the song was first written for the new Masterplan album, he already had a hard rock arrangement in his head, which of course was never going to suit the power metal crowd of Masterplan, so he saved it for the right moment, for his own studio album. The song fits the album perfectly, and it almost doesn’t feel like a cover at all. Ride to the Guns is another one of the faster tracks. It’s the album’s hardest moment, where Jorn edge closer to heavy metal, but with its catchy chorus the song is of course friendlier to the classic hard rock tradition. It’s a song born to open a Jorn concert, with just the right dose of bombast.
This is a typical Jorn album. It feels more classically rock-oriented, with less need to torch everything, and with a bit less of the blackness that usually clings to all of the band’s past work in hefty doses. I Came to Rock is yet another tribute to Ronnie James Dio. It’s a seriously dark song with a great chorus that conjures up a mood of doom-laden drama theatre. It’s a song with a bleak vision. The band absolutely has to make it a regular part of their live sets. The energy is close to Ride To The Guns, but I Came to Rock stands apart from everything else on the album precisely because of that chorus, with its exceptional melodic catchiness. It really stands out here, and it would be right at home on one of the Allen / Lande records.
So. »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« won’t shift the Earth’s axis! When you listen to the album, the two magnetic poles will still be where they always were, and the Earth will keep rolling along its usual ecliptic orbit. What you see is what you get. That saying applies to the music of Jorn in general, and to the new album too. The new album feels a touch more sophisticated, more retro heavy rock, while the sensitive power of Jorn Lande’s vocal expression, which only gets better with age, sparkles even more. »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« is yet another very, very good album from the band. No standouts, but no misfires either. Jorn remain synonymous with quality. They keep swimming in waters they’ve mastered, and with this new album they stay true to them. »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« will be snapped up by all fans of Jorn, of classic “minus Ozzy era” Black Sabbath, of “Dio era” Rainbow, and of old “Moody/Marsden era” Whitesnake.
Lineup
Jørn Lande – vocals
Tore Moren – guitar
Jimmy Iversen – guitar
Nic Anglieri – bass
Willy Bendiksen – drums
Production
Jørn Lande
Tracklist
- My Road
- Bring Heavy Rock To The Land
- A Thousand Cuts
- Ride Like The Wind
- Chains Around You
- The World I See
- Time To Be King
- Ride To The Guns
- Black Morning
- I Came To Rock
