Sometimes you read the description of an album that isn’t exactly your standard fare and your mind prompts you that there is a rather good chance of it all ending up rather badly. Sadly those kind of albums tend to get either a cursory glance or get looked over in favour or more likely candidates. That is one of my resolutions this year – to explore more of the music that traditionally went into the reserve pile…
Johan ‘Jono’ Norrby’s 10 track ‘Life’ album is what I would term as Prog with a touch of Pomp thrown in, and there’s a relentlessness to his compositions here that are just a different kind of crazy as he blends his alchemic mix of high-drama Queen and Styx evoking thoughts of Freddie Mercury and Dennis DeYoung along the way. It’s an album dominated by his rather grand vocals and whilst that isn’t necessarily a bad thing it doe leave very little room for the music to breathe, making it all rather overwhelming especially at first listen.
With two albums already under his belt as ‘Jono’ Norrby debuts with Frontiers here ably backed by a veteran band that rather gets lost under his sheer force of will and its that overwhelming vocal that is both the real strength and weakness here. If you love flamboyance its here in spades ,but there’s also some hard rocking meat and potatoes too like opening track ‘Sailors’ which seeks to ease you into the more elaborate terrain.
If you’re new to Jono and Norrby’s work like me, you’ll love this overblown minor masterpiece: from the riff and key driven ‘No Return’ through the odd but unmissable ‘On the Other Side’ to the real rock out of ‘The Magician.’ It’s the epics though like ‘Trust’, ‘My Love’, Downside’ and ‘To Be Near You’ (maybe just edging favoritism) though that really grab you attention. There’s so much going on with lush orchestration, wonderful drive and above all killer vocals though that you’ll come back again and again.
Theatrical – yes, overblown – you bet, and when it needs to be tender like on closing track the ballad ‘The March’ it still manages to deliver without all the bluster.I’m a convert!