 Jorn Lande has been pursuing
his solo career more actively since he quit Ark and
Masterplan and as of 2006's The Duke, he seemed more interested in
doing the 70s influenced hard rock with his modern metal twist and
remarkably ripping off David Coverdale. The Duke might not have been
his best, but was a solid and infectious album.
This was confirmed with
his covers album from last year, and 2008 sees him release his latest
studio effort titled Lonely are the Brave. The album opens with the
title song, a bit of a rehash as far as vocal melodies and riffs go, and marred by the lack of any guitar leads and with some sterile guitar
sound. Jorn follows that with a slow chuggy plodding song called...
Night City...just doesn't work. War of the World's middle section is
completely wasted with incessant chugging and even those damn
squeals. Good song and with finally a good solo, but with the filler
parts, this album is off to a less than desirable start.
Shadow People is
finally uptempo and is reminiscent of some classic Dio but dude,
where are those ass kicking solos?! The next two songs, Soul of the
Wind and Man of the Dark, are back to the slow pace, but the
songwriting is a lot more spontaneous and epic like Dio-era Sabbath,
they just end up working a lot better than the ones before. The
culprit is the oft-repeated Coverdale clone vocal lines and cheesy
lyrics with brooding slow-chuggy metal just don't work too well.
But fear not, there
isn't too much of Coverdale on this album, and the next track
Promises is good too. It's angry, epic, has a bombastic chorus making
it my pick of the album. Thing is, even here there's a lot of
chopping that could've been done in the middle part, because you'd
expect that to lead us to a face melting solo, but it just doesn't go
there. Jorn seems to have forgotten that there's always a great
guitar player that complements the vocalists he's influenced by.
The Inner Road sees him
scream Black Death in the chorus. Sounds good enough on its own, but
the riffs are by the numbers and just standard order Jorn if you know
his back catalogue as a solo artist. The album closes with Hellfire,
the gloomiest song of the album and even though the vocal melodies
are some classic Jorn, the song itself is nothing to write home
about. Stormbringer as one of the bonus tracks is great and listened
alongside, it actually lifts the album a bit.
Jorn is obviously
trying to branch out a bit on this album but the songs just aren't
strong enough to do justice to his magical voice. He needs to
collaborate with a guitar hero very badly.
Label: Frontiers
Year of Release: 2008
|
