Album review: JORN – Heavy Rock Radio II

Frontiers [Release date 24.01.20]

Jorn Lande is back with his second volume of songs he grew up with or influenced him – making this his fourth covers album to date. These songs get the Jorn heavy rock treatment or as the album’s subtitle states ‘executing the classics’.

The first collection came out in 2016, from which you get three songs on here as digitally remastered versions. Not sure the world needs another chance to listen to Jorn’s ‘executing’ the Eagles classic ‘Hotel California’.

There are a couple of misses on the new covers like ‘Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)’ – written by Bob Dylan and a big hit for Manfred Mann – and Foreigner’s ‘Night Life’ seems to lack much spark. However, the hits include ‘Lonely Nights’ (originally by Bryan Adams and seek out the excellent Uriah Heep version of this song too), the Russ Ballard penned ‘Winning’ (complete with bagpipes!) and a great rendition of Deep Purple’s ‘Bad Attitude’. ‘Winning’ I had not heard before and sent me off to discover the Santana version. That is partly Jorn’s aim with these albums to celebrate classic songs and introduce some lesser known gems he enjoys to a new audience.

Needless to say Jorn gets to pay tribute to Ronnie Dio on Dio’s ‘Mystery’ plus there is Sabbath’s ‘Die Young’ included as one of the bonus tracks.

Top notch musicians involved as you’d expect with any Jorn album including guitarist Trond Holter and Alessandro Del Vecchio (who plays some tasty Hammond throughout the album).

You can’t fault Jorn for his enthusiasm in ‘Jorn-ifying’ these songs he loves and his voice suits (most) of the selected tunes. Here’s hoping his next album will be all new material and until then we can enjoy a bit of Jorn rock radio… ***1/2

Review by Jason Ritchie

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

In this sequence we play ‘The Best of 2024′ GRTR! reviewer selections

Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)