Jorn
Heavy Rock Radio
Frontiers Music Srl
2016
Jorn Lande is one of the better singers out there and although it has taken him a number of year or albums to get where he’s at, he seems to be spreading himself a little thin with a plethora of live, best and well, cover albums. I was initially quite looking forward the prospect of a new studio album by him, but then again I thought that Jorn and Trond had just finished “Dracula” not that long ago, so I was a little curious and when I found that this was gonna be the second “covers” album for Jorn after the obvious dedication to Ronnie James with “Dio”, I was a little disappointed.
Obviously this is probably happening to pay tribute to the acts the big Norse likes and to keep motivated and not for the mula, since hardly anyone these days buys this “shit” anyway, with people preferring to “stream” and not invest themselves in music. Also another thing that can be considered as a plus, is the eclectic selection of songs to be “JORNicated”, which includes some obvious selections, but also a few surprises.
So next to the quite banal, but beautiful nonetheless “Hotel California”, we’re treated with Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” in an interesting rendition to say the least and a number of other classics some dead “commercial” and some “deeper cuts”, like John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice”, Queen’s “Killer Queen”, Journey’s “Don't Stop Believin’” and Foreigner’s “Rev on the Red Line” in a selection that strikes a good balance between big hits and personal (Jorn’s) favorites… and those are but a few “in his “jukebox”, the Norse god of song chooses to include “The Final Frontier” by Iron Maiden (a rather unlikely choice – but an interesting one), as well as “Live to Win” by Paul Stanley (a helluva great track), and a few more hard rock classics like Deep Purple’s “Stormbringer”, Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” and Black Sabbath’s (Dio era) “Die Young” to complete the mix.
While keeping faithful to most tracks, he either “rocks up” some of the softer numbers to fit him better, or makes the necessary concessions with most of the renditions succeeding in what they set out to do and only a few hitting wide of the target…
Frida’s (From Abba) “I Know There’s Something Going On” actually sounds like a marked improvement, with the fuller orchestration and more passionate vocals, beating up the more spartan and quite weak and nasal (at least in the verses) original.
Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”, a rather daring attempt, is obviously somewhat transformed to fit Jorn, but it also ends up sounding quite interesting.
“Rev on the Red Line” is probably not Foreigner’s best known track, more like a deep trac, from their catalogue and while Jorn balances between a clean enough vocal and a somewhat raspier one, it’s another well done track.
John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice” is such an anthemic track that you can’t easily mess up even if you intended to, so even a just plainly good performance gets an easy “pass”.
Where Jorn messes up a bit, without butchering the songs, but not managing to stay faithful to the original, is Paul Stanley’s “Live to Win” (which he does a lot gruffier) and Queen’s “Killer Queen” both songs that extensively rely on the singer’s spectacular timbres and falsetto respectively, which Jorn tries to compensate with passion and grit, but somehow fails to “manage” all that convincingly. Not bad efforts, but… Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”, which is actually sandwiched between them, is actually more susceptible to a grittier interpretation and ends up not sounding quite bad at all.
“Hotel California” loses its folksy ballad-like character in favor of a quite biting version with lots of guitars up front and in your face that doesn’t really surpass the original in any way, without meaning that Jorn’s vocal is bad, actually an acoustic spartan version of this might have been way more interesting…
With Jorn having mastered the DIO and COV schools, “Rainbow in the Dark”, “Strombringer” and “Die Young” are expectedly pretty good and don’t stray from the originals too much really… the only question that remained in my mind was can Jorn channel Dickinson well? And the answer after listening to “The Final Frontier” is he hardly even tries to – doing the song in his own way, which actually sounds quite dynamic and interesting, but it’s still one of the lesser “Maiden” tracks that actually is worth listening to in this “different” light…
Not a bad effort, but a second covers album might be pushing things towards over-saturation, a bit…
Obviously this is probably happening to pay tribute to the acts the big Norse likes and to keep motivated and not for the mula, since hardly anyone these days buys this “shit” anyway, with people preferring to “stream” and not invest themselves in music. Also another thing that can be considered as a plus, is the eclectic selection of songs to be “JORNicated”, which includes some obvious selections, but also a few surprises.
So next to the quite banal, but beautiful nonetheless “Hotel California”, we’re treated with Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” in an interesting rendition to say the least and a number of other classics some dead “commercial” and some “deeper cuts”, like John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice”, Queen’s “Killer Queen”, Journey’s “Don't Stop Believin’” and Foreigner’s “Rev on the Red Line” in a selection that strikes a good balance between big hits and personal (Jorn’s) favorites… and those are but a few “in his “jukebox”, the Norse god of song chooses to include “The Final Frontier” by Iron Maiden (a rather unlikely choice – but an interesting one), as well as “Live to Win” by Paul Stanley (a helluva great track), and a few more hard rock classics like Deep Purple’s “Stormbringer”, Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark” and Black Sabbath’s (Dio era) “Die Young” to complete the mix.
While keeping faithful to most tracks, he either “rocks up” some of the softer numbers to fit him better, or makes the necessary concessions with most of the renditions succeeding in what they set out to do and only a few hitting wide of the target…
Frida’s (From Abba) “I Know There’s Something Going On” actually sounds like a marked improvement, with the fuller orchestration and more passionate vocals, beating up the more spartan and quite weak and nasal (at least in the verses) original.
Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”, a rather daring attempt, is obviously somewhat transformed to fit Jorn, but it also ends up sounding quite interesting.
“Rev on the Red Line” is probably not Foreigner’s best known track, more like a deep trac, from their catalogue and while Jorn balances between a clean enough vocal and a somewhat raspier one, it’s another well done track.
John Farnham’s “You’re the Voice” is such an anthemic track that you can’t easily mess up even if you intended to, so even a just plainly good performance gets an easy “pass”.
Where Jorn messes up a bit, without butchering the songs, but not managing to stay faithful to the original, is Paul Stanley’s “Live to Win” (which he does a lot gruffier) and Queen’s “Killer Queen” both songs that extensively rely on the singer’s spectacular timbres and falsetto respectively, which Jorn tries to compensate with passion and grit, but somehow fails to “manage” all that convincingly. Not bad efforts, but… Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”, which is actually sandwiched between them, is actually more susceptible to a grittier interpretation and ends up not sounding quite bad at all.
“Hotel California” loses its folksy ballad-like character in favor of a quite biting version with lots of guitars up front and in your face that doesn’t really surpass the original in any way, without meaning that Jorn’s vocal is bad, actually an acoustic spartan version of this might have been way more interesting…
With Jorn having mastered the DIO and COV schools, “Rainbow in the Dark”, “Strombringer” and “Die Young” are expectedly pretty good and don’t stray from the originals too much really… the only question that remained in my mind was can Jorn channel Dickinson well? And the answer after listening to “The Final Frontier” is he hardly even tries to – doing the song in his own way, which actually sounds quite dynamic and interesting, but it’s still one of the lesser “Maiden” tracks that actually is worth listening to in this “different” light…
Not a bad effort, but a second covers album might be pushing things towards over-saturation, a bit…