Jorn Lande has been pursuing his solo career more actively since he quit Ark and Masterplan and as of 2006's The Duke, he seemed more interested in doing the 70s influenced hard rock with his modern metal twist and remarkably ripping off David Coverdale. The Duke might not have been his best, but was a solid and infectious album.

This was confirmed with his covers album from last year, and 2008 sees him release his latest studio effort titled Lonely are the Brave. The album opens with the title song, a bit of a rehash as far as vocal melodies and riffs go, and marred by the lack of any guitar leads and with some sterile guitar sound. Jorn follows that with a slow chuggy plodding song called... Night City...just doesn't work. War of the World's middle section is completely wasted with incessant chugging and even those damn squeals. Good song and with finally a good solo, but with the filler parts, this album is off to a less than desirable start.

Shadow People is finally uptempo and is reminiscent of some classic Dio but dude, where are those ass kicking solos?! The next two songs, Soul of the Wind and Man of the Dark, are back to the slow pace, but the songwriting is a lot more spontaneous and epic like Dio-era Sabbath, they just end up working a lot better than the ones before. The culprit is the oft-repeated Coverdale clone vocal lines and cheesy lyrics with brooding slow-chuggy metal just don't work too well.

But fear not, there isn't too much of Coverdale on this album, and the next track Promises is good too. It's angry, epic, has a bombastic chorus making it my pick of the album. Thing is, even here there's a lot of chopping that could've been done in the middle part, because you'd expect that to lead us to a face melting solo, but it just doesn't go there. Jorn seems to have forgotten that there's always a great guitar player that complements the vocalists he's influenced by.

The Inner Road sees him scream Black Death in the chorus. Sounds good enough on its own, but the riffs are by the numbers and just standard order Jorn if you know his back catalogue as a solo artist. The album closes with Hellfire, the gloomiest song of the album and even though the vocal melodies are some classic Jorn, the song itself is nothing to write home about. Stormbringer as one of the bonus tracks is great and listened alongside, it actually lifts the album a bit.

Jorn is obviously trying to branch out a bit on this album but the songs just aren't strong enough to do justice to his magical voice. He needs to collaborate with a guitar hero very badly.

Label: Frontiers
Year of Release: 2008