Norwegian singer
Jorn Lande has been around for a while and is lauded in some
circles as a man with a great voice who has produced some
great hard rock and metal over the years. My own experience
of his work had thus far been limited to seeing him live at
the Firefest show in Nottingham in 2007 where a mixture of
poor Whitesnake and Thin Lizzy covers and, to these ears at
least,
humdrum originals left me mystified as to what the fuss was
about.
Having had a careful
listen to this, his latest solo release, I’m still
trying to work that out. The press release that came with
the album cites Whitesnake, Rainbow, Dio and Black Sabbath
as peers and they’re right but for mostly he seems to be trying to
imitate those forebears rather than be inspired by them to come up with
his own sound. Vocally he can certainly sing and does sound
like Dio and Coverdale in their heyday at times but often
Lande simply
takes the histrionics a step too far and becomes tiresome.
The main fault with Lonely Are The Brave however sits firmly
with the song writing.
There are nine songs here and just about every one sounds
like an outtake from a Whitesnake or Dio album that didn’t
make the grade. Sure there are a few good riffs kicking
around here and there
but their potential is never realised with a memorable
melody line or interesting chorus. Mostly the good points
are lost by messy attempts to include three or four
different ideas in a song, poor and sometimes dreadful
choruses which are done to death making the song a minute or
more longer than it needs to be.
I’m sure my
negativity thus far is enraging Jorn fans but when I look
for positives there’s only one song that stands out, album
closer “Hellfire”. This is a huge pounding, epic slab of
metal with some excellent vocals and just makes you wish
that the
rest of the album had been up to the same standard. I understand that this
is a song used on a previous project so maybe the rest of
the material has been put together hurriedly to get a
release out. It’s a shame if that’s the case. If you’re a fan of
the man then I suggest you seek a second opinion. Me? I
still don’t get what the fuss is about!
Ian
Sutherland
