Mostly written
and co-produced with the Frontiers labels’ in-house producer Alessandro Del
Vecchio, who is a fine musician in his own right (Hardline, Voodoo Circle) it
has taken a pain staking 2 years to write.
This time Jorn
has put together a band not of session musicians but consisting of Primal Fear
members Alex Beyrodt (guitars), Mat Sinner (bass), Francesco Jovino (drums) and
Del Vecchio himself on keyboards.
With this line
up you would expect a mixture of heavy hitting guitar work along with great
melodies and hooks and a powerhouse rhythm section combined with Jorn’s
outstanding vocal capabilities and some Whitesnake and Dio influences. You
might think you’ll know what you’re going to get if you are a Jorn fan but this
album lifts him to a whole new level. There are also a couple of surprise
guests!
Album opener and
title track ‘Life on Death Road’ is a searing, blistering attack on your
eardrums and senses. Fast, heavy with some great riffs and powerful drumming
from Jovino it’s a seven odd minutes belter with the guests appearing on the
guitar solos featuring Craig Goldy (Dio and now Dio Disciples) and Gus G
(Firewind, Ozzy Osbourne, Arch Enemy and Kamelot to name a few) as well as
Beyrodt himself.
Several other
songs on the album follow in the same vein including ‘Love is The Remedy’ (with
another shredding solo from Gus G), The Slippery Slope (Hangman’s Rope) and
‘Insoluble Maze (Dreams in The Blindness)’, the later being very reminiscent of
a Dio-era song with a mixture of his own material and his time with Black
Sabbath but it’s definitely Jorn’s song in terms of the vocal delivery.
There are a few
more heavy rock style songs on the album like ‘Hammered to The Cross (The
Business)’ with its slower riff and classic steady bass and drum lines, ’Devil
You Can Drive’, with a nice keyboard part from Del Vecchio and ‘Man From The
80’s’ which lyrically will resonate with those of a certain age!!
Of course there
are a couple of ballads. ‘Dreamwalker’ with a piano intro that suggests a
standard ballad but which explodes into something a lot more along the lines of
a power metal ballad, melodic with strong vocals, great guitar solo and a nice
three part harmony vocal to finish.
The
real full on ballad on the album is the wonderful ‘The Optimist’. Co-written by
Gus G it has a mixture of subtle guitar, bass, drums and keyboard lines and
Jorn can’t help himself dipping back
into his last album with some lyrical nods to the likes of Kate Bush with the
term cloud busting being used as one example (see if you can spot a few others…).
Finally we come
to the David Coverdale/Whitesnake influenced songs. Again they are all Jorns
and not a copy cat like say on The Snakes’ album. ‘Fire to The Sun’, however,
could’ve been on Whitesnake’s 1987 album and not been out of place, with the
whole band in full flow with hard kicking drums and a great melodic solo from
Beyrodt. ‘I Walked Away’ is a more bluesy song in the style of the early Snake
or Coverdale solo era with a solid rhythm section and Jorn showing off his
vocal range from low end blues to higher end screams, again making it his own.
A short but fantastic solo just makes the song work beautifully.
Album closer
‘Blackbirds’ is the last example of how early Whitesnake influenced Jorn with
its opening vocal delivery and lyrics before morphing into something more from
the late 80’s era with yet another great solo from Beyrodt.
In no way are
any of these songs ‘tribute’ songs, they clearly show their influence but are
delivered with passion and a more modern sound thanks to the great production
from Lande and del Vecchio.
It’s hard to
summarise an album roughly 70 minutes in length in a few words but for the King
of Norwegian Heavy / Power metal vocals this may well be his crowning glory.
Buy it, you won’t regret a minute of it.
Review by Andy
Gillen
Life on Death
Road is out now on Frontiers Music srl
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