Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has explained why he recruited Norwegian vocalist Jorn Lande for his latest solo album, “From The Dark”, while addressing the inevitable comparisons between Lande and the late Ronnie James Dio.
Speaking in a new interview with Germany’s Star FM radio station, Iommi said he chose Lande because of the singer’s powerful voice and its natural fit with the guitarist’s heavy, riff-driven music.
Although Lande has frequently been compared to Dio throughout his career, Iommi believes those comparisons overlook the Norwegian singer’s individual abilities.
I just liked Jorn’s voice. That’s the problem, really. Everybody’s gonna compare something, and it’s unfair, really, because Jorn is Jorn, and he was a fan of Dio anyway. But Jorn sings the way he does. He’s got that type of voice, and that’s the sort of voice I wanted for this album. I like his voice. It’s powerful. And I wanted that sort of style of singing.
The collaboration also carries a connection to Iommi’s history with Dio. Lande previously performed with members of Heaven & Hell at a tribute concert in London following Dio‘s death in 2010, an experience that helped establish a musical relationship with the Black Sabbath guitarist.
“From The Dark” was released on October 23 through BMG. The album features Lande on vocals throughout, with bassist Becky Baldwin and drummer Karl Brazil completing the core lineup.
Lande also shares songwriting credits on every track. The record was co-produced by Iommi and longtime collaborator Mike Exeter.
Interestingly, Iommi initially planned to create an instrumental solo album.
Well, I don’t know because I’ve only done… I’ve done four sort of rough ideas of instrumentals that I started off with, and they are sort of a couple of acoustic sort of tracks. And I sort of didn’t go any further with them because I just put them down and then left them, and then decided to do an album with a band and a vocalist… At some point, I will finish them off and do some more, but I was quite happy to do a vocal one this time because the two instrumentals that I did before for the perfume, I enjoyed those because I used orchestration on them and just branched out a bit different, and it was good. So, who knows? I don’t know what the next thing will be, if I do some more instrumentals or what. I will put these finally at some point together and maybe use some orchestration on them.
