The first guest vocalist for the new AVANTASIA album and tour can be announced. Jorn Lande will appear on “Ghostlights”, set to be released in January via Nuclear Blast.
Tobias: “It is with great pleasure that I can announce the “Beast From The North“ to join forces with AVANTASIA once again. The STRIKING VIKING: Jorn Lande! We’ve just finished his vocal recordings and he sounds – what a surprise – KILLER! Jorn is a monster! It is with even greater pleasure to let you know that Jorn is gonna do the world tour next year, kicking off in March! AVANTASIA live – three hours every night, from the “Metal Opera” to the new album “Ghostlights”. We’ll be an epic line up and we’ll deliver an epic show! Stay tuned!“
Furthermore AVANTASIA announce a new European tour, kicking off on March 4th, 2016 in Berlin. Check out the tour dates below:
Frontiers Music Srl has announced the release of a new exciting album written and performed by the two Norwegian Rock Stars Jorn Lande and Trond Holter entitled “DRACULA – Swing of Death” on January 23rd in Europe and January 27th in North America. Watch the video below.
This exciting concept album was inspired by the life of Count Vlad the III, Prince of Wallachia, widely known as Vlad, The Impaler or by his patronymic name Vlad Dracul(a). The whole story explores the inner struggle inside the multifaceted and engorging character that this mysterious 15th Century personality was, while also taking into account some of the metaphysical aspects that passed into literature, forming the whole basis of the vampire mythos.
Jorn Lande – who impersonates Dracula, is the main character of the album and the female parts are sung by Norwegian singer Lena Fløitmoen (representing Mina/Lucy from the Bram Stoker book). The drama of the story reveals Dracula’s inner battle, where he still remembers what true love was, and as he wandered the Earth for centuries with a thirst for blood, his loneliness and desire to be able to love again has led him to the brink of insanity. In the original Bram Stoker version, he leaves Transylvania by ship and when he meets Lucy’s best friend, she reminds him so much of his first love Mina, that he becomes obsessed. His mission is to take her as his bride, and make her Queen of the dark.
Musically, “Swing of Death” is not like a typical rock opera or musical, since it has no storyteller or too many long instrumental parts and intros. It is an album that gets to the point with no detours and even if it exposes some diverse musical landscapes, it does include catchy and melodic songs with commercial radio potential. Vocally this release gives you everything from Jorn Lande’s past extensive catalogue all in one album. Jorn’s ability to be innovative and original while at the same time showing where his roots came from, is truly unique.
Jorn and Trond’s musical influence when creating this epic masterpiece came mostly from 70’s era Meat Loaf, Queen, Alice Cooper, plus some other Classic and more contemporary Hard Rock elements. All mixed together with their own modern musical heavy rock style, Dracula “Swing of death” is something extraordinary. The lyrics are not limited to the old days of Bram Stoker’s era and could easily be a Dracula story of today.
Track listing: Hands of Your God; Walking On Water; Swing of Death; Masquerade Ball; Save Me; River Of Tears; Queen of the Dead; Into the Dark; True Love Through Blood (Instr.); Under The Gun
DRACULA “Swing of Death” features performances from:
Jorn Lande: Lead Vocals
Trond Holter: Guitars, Piano
Bernt Jansen: Bass
Per Morten Bergseth: Drums
Lena Fløitmoen: Lead and Background Vocals on “Save Me”; “River of Tears”, “Into the Dark”, “Under the Gun”, plus background vocals on “Swing of Death”
Frontiers Music Srl is pleased to announce the release of the anticipated fourth album from ALLEN / LANDE, the vocal alliance between Norwegian Jorn Lande and powerhouse Symphony X / Adrenaline Mob vocalist Russell Allen entitled “The Great Divide” on October 17th in Europe and October 21st in North America.
Following three successful albums written, played and produced by Magnus Karlsson (of Primal Fear/Starbreaker), the new album “The Great Divide” offers a substantial change in that former Stratovarius guitarist and main composer, Timo Tolkki took on the challenge to write and produce the new recording. Tolkki also performs all instrumentation on the album except for drums, which are handled by Jami Huovinen.
Work on the album started in late 2013 when the first songs were demoed and sent to the two singers, who loved the direction of the new music. Also, for the first time, Jorn Lande has contributed vocal melodies and lyrics to the album. The final result is certainly outstanding and the crisp mixes from Dennis Ward (PC 69, Place Vendome, Unisonic) have delivered an amazing sounding album. Stunning cover art created by French artist Stan Decker completes the package of the most eagerly anticipated Melodic Metal release of 2014!
The opening track from the album, “Come Dream With Me”, is available for streaming via Soundcloud via this link:
and a 3-song trailer is available on Youtube via this link:
Two more songs from the album will be unveiled in the coming weeks prior to the album’s release.
“The Great Divide” tracklisting includes the following songs: Come Dream With Me; Down From The Mountain; In The Hands Of Time; Solid Ground; Lady Of Winter; Dream About Tomorrow; Hymn To The Fallen; The Great Divide; Reaching For The Stars; Bittersweet.
Cambridge Rock Festival returns to Haggis Farm Polo Club on 7-10th August 2014.
Top of the bill for the Saturday night is FM who will be celebrating their 30th anniversary, with Snakecharmer and Wishbone Ash headlining on the Friday and Sunday.
A recent and very welcome addition to the bill is the former Masterplan vocalist, Norwegian Jørn Lande, who will play his only UK gig at this event.
For Prog fans, the York-based Cloud Atlas are confirmed, and the acclaimed and ever-popular Mostly Autumn will also return.
There is an impressive pedigree of blues-rock acts, including the incendiary Chantel McGregor and the high-energy hard-rocking Larry Miller.
The Hard Rock and psychedelic combo that is Pearl Handled Revolver are also returning after their 2013 triumph.
Cambridge Rock Festival is renowned for having a wonderful mix of Rock, Metal, Prog and Blues, and with over 100 more acts still to be revealed 2014 is shaping up to be another classic already.
Three (yes three) new videos for the song ‘Overload’ from JORN‘s eighth and latest studio album entitled Traveller have been uploaded to YouTube. Check out footage from the Czech Republic and the Netherlands below:
In November, Jorn parted ways with drummer Willy Bendiksen. Jorn leader Jorn Lande states: “After many years of working together, I am sorry to announce that Willy Bendiksen will no longer be playing with us. We wish him all the best and good luck for the future. A new drummer will be announced.”
Mark Dean of Myglobalmind webzine recently conducted an interview with former HELLOWEEN and current MASTERPLAN guitarist Roland Grapow. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Myglobalmind: Do you think that MASTERPLAN has exceeded the personal expectations that you had when you first started?.
Roland: Especially with the first two albums, I think that we achieved a lot of respect and a lot of surprise from people. Nobody really expected anything so strong from us. I guess even the HELLOWEEN guys didn’t even know when they fired us that maybe we would be just go out of the business. After the first album, I was very happy that we came back with such a powerful return. It was such a big success for that time. Nowadays sales are on the way down every year and there are other problems. We have just released our fifth album and I think that over the years, there has been a stable degree of good quality within the band. There have been some big lineup changes, singer problems… It still sounds like MASTERPLAN for my taste.
Myglobalmind: You referred there briefly to the lineup changes that MASTERPLAN have undergone . Do you find that rotation of the band personalities is necessary for its evolution and development?
Roland: I think that its basically hard to explain why we always had singer changes. When we started MASTERPLAN with Jorn [Lande], a lot of people had warned me to be careful saying that he was very difficult. That he was never happy or satisfied with things. I think that the only thing that he really was concentrated on was trading on a solo career called JORN. Everything else for him was just a side project; he never saw MASTERPLAN as his main band. It was especially bad for me as I had put so much love, work and so much feeling for this band. I had given everything to make the band big. Jorn never did anything for us for this band. He never even said anything great about MASTERPLAN. That is not nice; you need a really good team behind you which loves this work. It’s the same as a company — if someone is not dedicated totally 100%, it doesn’t matter what a great voice he has. You stay on the same level, but now with a totally different lineup, we have a really big chance of getting further now. We can play live again, and have already played a couple of shows. There are a lot of shows booked, including some festivals, and we are planning a tour in October. That just wasn’t happening for about six years, which was quite terrible, to be honest. It is definitely very important to play live. It doesn’t make sense to make great music with people saying, “You are a great band.” If you don’t show yourself, nobody can fully get that feeling. Personally, I need it as well — if there is a band that I really like, but I don’t get to see their live performance, it doesn’t give me that last 30%. I think that is really important to get more closer to the band. Especially sometimes when you think that a song is OK, but if you see that band performance of the song live then you will always remember it. It’s like an imprint on your brain or something. There is also some elements of difference, with the solo parts and some improvising. Sometimes we shorten some things which are too long for the live situation. Or we make parts for the audience to sing along. The next plan in the near future is to make a live album or DVD. MASTERPLAN now have five albums out after 10-12 years so we want to release a DVD or something definitely.
Myglobalmind: Do you then prefer to focus creatively on looking forward to the future, rather than back to the past?
Roland: Sometimes I like to look back, but am more thinking of the future. I am not one of these guys sitting at home thinking back that was such a good time. Of course we had a great time in HELLOWEEN, but also some terrible times. The same is true of MASTERPLAN. However, MASTERPLAN is the kind of band that makes me prouder than HELLOWEEN, even though we did great work in HELLOWEEN. Everything that I am doing now is the result of being a longtime member of this really professional band. We work with Sanctuary, English management. We have toured many times with [IRON] MAIDEN, so we have had good experiences. That really helps you a lot for the future. Definitely that arrangement and also working with great producers, who have really lifted the MASTERPLAN sound.
Read the entire interview from Myglobalmind webzine.
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Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
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