Possessed with one of the biggest voices in rock – possibly the biggest, alongside his regular collaborator Russell Allen – Jorn Lande has carved out a career with some great releases over the years. His place as Dio’s natural successor is very much assured due to a few albums of self-penned material often presenting well-honed performances. He’s also fond of a cover tune or six: his 2010 album ‘Dio’, in particular, did exactly what it said on the tin, with Lande putting his stamp on tunes originally brought into the public eye by the late, great Ronnie James, the results meeting critical acclaim. Some six years on from his Dio-fest, Lande’s eleventh studio album ‘Heavy Rock Radio’ finds the huge voiced Norwegian wheeling out more covers. This time, however, the results are sometimes questionable. So questionable in places, the disc could have perhaps been subtitled “Jesus Christ, How Did This Happen?”. The answer to that should-be-rhetorical question, of course, simply being “because he’s Jorn Lande”. As most people know, with Jorn you only get Jorn, and that means – whatever the material in hand – it’s very much a case of “dials up to eleven and needle in the red” all the way. In this respect, he’s very much made each of the cuts his own, but frankly, his choices don’t always work.

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