Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Jorn
Label: Frontiers Records
Release: 2013
Length: 73:35
Rating: 4/5
Hyperactive Jorn Lande, the vocalist every musician would want on their team when it comes to the legacy of the classic hard rock school, and heavy metal too. With his band Jorn, Jorn Lande has put out seven studio albums to date. The man is active in several musical fields at once, which is why he recently had to step out of German power metallers Masterplan again. He simply can’t do it all. There’s the Allen/Lande project, there are guest spots, like the recent one on Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s new album, there’s the career with the band Jorn, and so on…
This time the workaholic spoils us with almost 74 minutes of music dressed up in orchestral arrangements. Run your eyes down the tracklist of »Symphonic« and you’ll quickly see that the bulk of it is centered on the current studio album »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land«, with just three covers and a few picks from older Jorn albums »Lonely Are The Brave«, »Spirit Black« and »Out To Every Nation«.
A welcome move, and a kind of logical artistic challenge on this musician’s road of musical maturing. Playing in Allen / Lande and working with the superb multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer Magnus Karlsson surely shaped this idea. To that end Jorn Lande even rearranged some of the basic riff structures in individual originals, which freed up extra room for the orchestrations. And of course Jorn Lande put careful, weighty picking first, choosing the songs that would ignite most convincingly alongside an orchestra.
Opener I Came To Rock is the ideal pick and surely the peak of this album. It’s the closing track of the current album »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« and has a great balance between building theatrical drama from verse into pre-chorus and perfect use of the melody in the chorus hook, where the orchestral arrangements slot in tastefully and effectively. The collision works. Jorn goes Broadway-style. Joking aside. Jorn fans will be thrilled, especially those who know the Allen/Lande project, where keyboards and the symphonic catchiness of the arrangements play a major role.
The release doesn’t dodge including three covers, which is pretty much standard practice for Jorn album releases. Rock N’ Roll Children, which you’ll find in the original on Ronnie James Dio’s »Sacred Herart« (1985), is probably one of the few songs among Jorn’s tributes to date to the sadly departed giant and author of the Bible of rock vocals that Jorn hasn’t yet turned into his own version! He’s still »obsessed« with Dio, after all. The great new version, the key to its success, is again hidden in that graduated build-up of dramatic moment from verse into a melodically predatory chorus. In the middle of the album sits the orchestral version of the Masterplan song Time To Be King (already included on »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« ) and, as you’d expect, at the tail end of »Symphonic« comes Jorn’s new Dio obsession in the Black Sabbath classic Mob Rules, which came out as a bonus track on »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« for the Japanese market only! A real lost (and found) gem is also the inclusion of the excellent Like Stone In Water, originally Jorn’s bonus track for the Japanese market on »Lonely Are The Brave« (2008).
The first part of the album is cemented, after Rock N’ Roll Children, by Jorn’s late-romantic, Sabbath-flavored cut The World I See, which keeps up a high yield of bombast and pomp catchiness in Jorn’s bold collision of rock with classical elements.
Through the middle of the album you’ll feel some ups and downs. Burn You Flame (»Spirit Black«, 2009) doesn’t carry the »Broadway« restructuring as effectively as the first three songs. After it, Man Of The Dark (»Lonely Are The Brave«, 2008) is more successful on that front. Black Morning is interesting too, and in its new arrangement garb it even picks up faint echoes of Michael Kamen’s arrangements for Hendrix on »In From the Storm« (Spanish Castle Magic, Little Wing).
Interestingly, Jorn has always drawn inspiration for writing his own songs from the pioneering bands that founded and cemented the hard rock school tradition, like Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake and later eighties versions of Black Sabbath, and consequently the Dio lineup! These bands too are so perceptive in their handling of melody that it’s often easy to link their rock heritage with orchestral arranging.
A great change of pace on »Symphonic« follows in Behind The Clown (»Out To Every Nation«, 2004), where the excellent melancholic melos of Celtic-tinged tunes impresses, the orchestrations step to the front, ahead of the rock vibe, and take decisive dominance in the song. Jorn’s vocal sensitivity feels especially good, and with it he triumphantly gets under your skin again and again. Lande is a big fan of Kate Bush, both the person and her work. At this point you can feel that bond. A firmly vibrant finish carries the album toward a new peak, an excellent version of the newer The Thousand Cuts from the current »Bring Heavy Rock To The Land« (2012), which closes the circle from the start of this compilation. Without Mob Rules, of course, it just wouldn’t work!
As you’d expect, this selection fluctuates in how well the chemistry works between classical and rock! But there’s no bad moment, no moment that isn’t convincing and credible in its direction. Jorn hypnotizes once more with his fantastic vocals, which are colorful, dynamically supple and can conjure up in a short span many faces, much sensitivity, many colorful emotional states. Jorn Lande remains a vocalist who, with the power of his vocal expression, simply won’t let you breathe again! And he stays in the top league of trained vocalists of the classic rock school!
This album is hugely important for Jorn Lande, as it will shape the arranging of ideas for the new studio album by Jorn. Given the melody that’s never lacking in Jorn’s music anyway, this album, after its excellent collision of rock with classical elements, proves that the melodic principle on future Jorn releases can be deepened and broadened even further. So it wouldn’t hurt for the vocalist to consider flirting even more radically with keyboards on future Jorn studio releases, because the orchestral figures on »Symphonic« create a thoroughly distinctive atmosphere, an energetic vibe, a mood that’s magical throughout, appealing and, in the balance it achieves between rock potency and listenability, hypnotically catchy! The result is a convincingly woven dialogue between the language of classical music and the language of rock.
This release is a must not just for fans of the band Jorn, but above all for fans of Jorn Lande the vocalist. The newly dimensioned musical arsenal of »Symphonic« is a unique musical experience, and such a musical trial, after all, also carried Jorn Lande’s basic purpose of delivering to the flock a somewhat different vocal and musical expression.
Line-up
Jorn Lande – vocals
Jimmy Iversen – guitar
Tore Moren – guitar
Nic Angileri – bass guitar
Willy Bendiksen – drums
Lasse Jensen – orchestral arrangements
Production
Jorn Lande
Track list
1. I Came To Rock
2. Rock And Roll Children
3. The World I See
4. Burn Your Flame
5. Man Of The Dark
6. My Road
7. Time To Be King
8. Black Morning
9. Like Stone In Water
10. Vision Eyes
11. War Of The World
12. Behind The Clown
13. A Thousand Cuts
14. The Mob Rules
