Classic rock stations aren't the only places where one can still find heavy metal and hard rock of the '70s and '80s variety. There is still plenty of old-school headbanger music being recorded in the 21st century; you just have to know where to look -- and the most important place to look is Europe, where an abundance of younger retro-metallers have been unapologetically obsessing over the '70s and '80s. Many of them have been focusing on power metal and/or progressive metal, but this solo outing by Norwegian singer
Jorn Lande isn't prog metal (
Jorn isn't a
Dream Theater disciple). Nor is it power metal in the strict sense; if one's idea of old-school power metal is folks like
Judas Priest,
Iron Maiden,
Manowar,
King Diamond,
Helloween,
Queensrÿche and
Grim Reaper,
Jorn doesn't really fall into that category. Rather, his most obvious metal/hard rock influence as a solo artist remains
Deep Purple; his passionate vocals leave no doubt that he holds
David Coverdale in extremely high regard. Enjoyable tracks like "Duke of Love" and "Midnight Madness" could have easily appeared on a
Deep Purple (or
Rainbow) album back in the '70s. But
Jorn (who also shows some appreciation of
Ronnie James Dio and
Robert Plant) gets a lot of respect from Europe's power metal revival crowd -- and even though
Deep Purple never played power metal, they certainly influenced a lot of power metal bands that emerged in the '70s or '80s (mostly the '80s). Like other derivative CDs that
Jorn has recorded as a solo artist,
The Duke doesn't pretend to be forward-thinking. But it's a decent and satisfying collection of heavy metal, hard rock and arena rock that fans of Europe's retro-metal movement should be aware of. [AFM also released the CD in 2006.] ~ Alex Henderson