Out To Every Nation is the latest offering by the former Ark and current Masterplan vocalist, Jorn Lande. Why this guy is not a household name by now is beyond me. His vocal performances, especially on the Worldchanger album and the brilliant Masterplan debut, puts him among the ranks of some of the finest hard rock and heavy metal vocalists that there is. This new album, Out To Every Nation is the third solo release by Jorn and is another slice of excellent melodic hard rock with a metal edge. Helping out Jorn are Ronny Tegmar, keyboards, Jorn Viggo Lofstad, guitar (Pagan’s Mind), Stian Kristoffersen (Pagan’s Mind), drums and Magnus Rosen (Hammerfall) on bass.

I always thought Jorn had a rather tough and soulful yet melodic David Coverdale-like voice and vocal delivery style but based on this album, I’d say that Coverdale is probably his favorite vocalist and that Whitesnake and Coverdale-era Deep Purple are his all-time favorite bands. Many of the tracks on this album have the Coverdale/Whitesnake vibe with the phrasing and bluesy emotional vocals. The album kicks off with Young Forever, an energetic and heavy track that has a solid melodic metal structure. Using a combination of classic hard rock vocals and a more modern heaviness to the riffs, he’s created a very catchy opener to the album. The Whitesnake vibes continue with tracks like the title track, Out To Every Nation, Something Else and especially Rock Spirit with it’s rock anthem style and classic Whitesnake style chorus. A nod to the old school on this one as a riff from Love Child off of Deep Purple’s Come Taste The Band album is thrown in at the end for good measure. The more atmospheric qualities of tracks like pounding heaviness of Living With Wolves, the apocalyptic One Day We Will Burn Out The Sun, Behind The Clown and the reflective When Angels Wings Were White allow Jorn a little self- indulgence into his own personal philosophies about global issues, the environment and the state of the human condition. The melodies soar on most tracks and prove that he has one of the strongest and best voices in metal today.

Instead of creating a very standard hard rock album, Jorn has come up with some very frenzied arrangements and interesting twists to his songs that take away any sense of predictability that any of his songs appear to have at the onset. Abrupt tempo changes, sudden speedy double bass passages and lots of lead guitar and keyboard soloing appear seemingly out of nowhere, even amongst some of the mellower tracks. Fans of traditional melodic hard rock may be taken aback by this and I can see their point. Some tracks seem like a basic arrangement with several pieces of other songs thrown in the middle just to mix it up a little bit; a possible attempt at infusing a progressive edge to the songs. For the most part, these little musical “adventures” work but in a few instances, they seem out of place.

Aside from some of the strange tempo changes, Jorn has once again delivered another solid album. If your first exposure to Jorn was the Masterplan album, check this one out. It will no doubt appeal to you as well. Masterplan is currently hard at work on a new album and this one comes at just the right time to tide us over until then.