Norway’s Jorn Lande’s pedigree is an impressive one. It is this pedigree that he returns to with his new release, the fifth under the Jorn banner, Lonely Are The Brave (Frontiers Records). His is a career that has seen involvement on nearly 30 albums alongside some of the greats in hard rock. The names are all there - Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden of Whitesnake who joined Jorn doing Whitesnake tracks in the band Snakes; Uli Jon Roth of The Scorpions; Joe Lynn Turner ex of Rainbow and Deep Purple; and guitar master Yngwie Malmsteen have all worked with Jorn among many others. However, arguably perhaps, he is better known for fronting German heavy metal band Masterplan.
Recently he has been working with Tobias Sammet’s own vast masterplan, Avantasia, alongside the legendary Alice Cooper, Magnum’s Bob Catley and Eric Singer of Kiss fame. They will be headlining the German Wacken Festival this summer as well as dates in Japan, Russia and South America. He can also be heard on Arjen Lucassen’s recent epic Ayreon album. Jorn is, if nothing else, driven and justifiably so because in the hard rock field singers of the quality of Jorn Lande are an ever decreasing commodity.
Lonely Are The Brave is everything you would expect and hope for from such a hard classic rock background. Mixed in Denmark by Tommy Hansen, whose previous work includes TNT, it will of course attract the inevitable comparisons to Whitesnake, mid-era Black Sabbath, and even early Rainbow; to an extent they are impossible to ignore. Having said that, Jorn does it with his own swaggering style and belief and with results like this who can fail to be impressed.
Jorn has gathered a solid band around him with the guitar prowess of both Jorn Viggo Lofstad and Tore Moren providing an excellent dual attack. Bass guitarist Sid Ringsby, also an ex-Snakes member, and drummer Willy Bendiksen complete a line up that, in typical Jorn style, will be extremely busy in 2008 and 2009 taking this album out on the road right across Europe. Live they are a force to be reckoned with and the 2007 double CD release Jorn:- Live In America captures some of that raw energy, drive and undiluted power that is present at any Jorn gig.
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