Four years after the release of “Heavy Rock Radio” Norwegian singer Jorn Lande returns with “Heavy Rock Radio II – Executing The Classics”; another album full of tracks given the Jorn cover treatment. The new album was released on 24th January by Frontiers Music. In between those two albums Jorn has also released another solo studio album, a live album and a compilation box set with Frontiers. The track “Lonely Night” was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show in November, followed by “Needles and Pins” in December.


 

Jorn Lande has been releasing albums since the 90’s with bands such as Vagabond, The Snakes, Ark and most notably with Masterplan between 2002 and 2010. He has also released four albums with Symphony X vocalist Russell Allen (between 2005 and 2014) and another with guitarist Trond Holter (2015) as well as being featured on eight Avantasia albums. In addition, there is an extensive catalogue of solo albums – by my count this is the thirteenth studio album and fourth covers album. There have also been four live albums, a compilation boxset (2018) and three greatest hits albums (the last of which, “Symphonic” in 2013, features classical music versions of tracks).


There are 11 new cover versions on the latest album. These are Bryan Adams’ “Lonely Nights”, Russ Ballard’s “Winning”, Don Henley’s “New York Minute”, The Searchers’ “Needles and Pins”, Santana’s “Love”, Pages’ “I Do Believe in You”, Foreigner’s “Nightlife”, Deep Purples’ “Bad Attitude”, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s “Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)”, Dio’s “Mystery” and Peter Gabriel’s “The Rhythm of the Heat”.


Many of these have been covered before by rock artists – “Quinn The Eskimo(The Mighty Quinn)” specifically springs to mind with covers by Gotthard, Krokus and others. However it is always worth checking out a Jorn version of any track!

 

Check out the Jorn website - http://www.jornlande.com/



About “NI Rocks Recommends”

This is purely a personal recommendation and some information about the artist and the album; not a traditional ‘review’. Most of the recommendations posted are for albums that have been sent to us digitally by the record label or promoter. Quite often I’ve also bought the album on CD or vinyl as well and sometimes I just feel the need to post a recommendation for an album that I’ve bought myself. Essentially these are albums that I like and which I’ve played some tracks from on the Shows on Rock Radio NI!