Jorn - Traveller

Published June 05 2013

*=Staff's pick	Overload Cancer Demon* Traveller* Window Maker* Make Your Engine Scream Legend Man Carry The Black* Rev On Monsoon The Man Who Was King

Genre	Heavy/Doom Metal/Hard Rock	Jorn Lande	Vocals
Tracks	10	Trond Holter	Guitar
Running time	51 Min.	Jimmy Iversen	Guitar
Label	Frontiers Records	Bernt Jansen	Bass
Release	14 June 2013	Willy Bendiksen	Drums
Country	Norway	-	Keyboard
Producer	Jorn Lande, Trond Holter
Similar artists	Dio, Candlemass

It seems like Jorn Lande has contributed to more albums than I can count to and Traveller is the Norwegian's eighth solo album and I immediately sense a distinct lack of new ideas. Although new guitarist Trond Holter has contributed to both songwriting and to the album's production, I really can't find many hot sparks to kick my ass real hard. It's repetitive with dark and gloomy themes, often surrounded by a heavy and doomy groove. I neither really can see a good reason to move even closer to the veins of Black Sabbath, Dio and such likes, when you're already an established artist, with a pretty long and also a partially successful career.

In my ears this release is as diverse as a straight line with a few bumps, even though some songs are varied in themselves. It follows a certain clear path that eventually gets somewhat fatiguing. There are occasional brilliant moments, but those points are unfortunately a bit too few and also no muscle breaking injections. Some of the heavy riffs are much to my liking, yet I can't really take this new effort to my heart. I dig a good portion of Lande's past work and I don't think that this album reach up to his level and his full standards.

His somewhat bluesy and heavy hitting voice still rules though and what he needs is a solid songwriting partner again, like when he cooperated with Roland Grapow on Masterplan's early releases. The heavier Cancer Demon, the more streaming title track and strong going Window Maker stand out as the album's most complete songs in my opinion. A fairly decent effort and the actual music on Traveller is not bad, yet not that appealing to me. I need more than an excellent singing performance to set my body in motion. 4 chalices to Lande's new release.

See also review of: Symphonic , Lonely Are The Brave , The Gathering , Unlocking The Past , The Duke

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	4	6	8	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Tobbe