Over the last few years Jorn Lande has established himself as one of the finest singers in rock and metal. Unfairly criticised by some as an unoriginal mix of Coverdale and Dio (like that's a bad thing?), but in the process making some of the finest music around with bands like Masterplan, Ark, Vagabond and Millenium, as well as a thriving solo career and too many other projects to name. Last year's solo album ‘The Duke' was very well received, and his work with Masterplan had finally seen him getting some of the plaudits he so richly deserved – only for Jorn to unexpectedly jump ship citing the reason as that old chestnut – ‘musical differences'. Now with a brace of solo albums to promote, the career retrospective ‘The Gathering' and a classic rock covers album, ‘Unlocking The Past', I finally track him down to his native Norway after he's spent the last two weeks working on separate projects in Spain and Sweden.

I see you've been travelling about quite a bit.

"It's the way things are for me, always – always the traveller."

So first of all, why did you leave Masterplan?

"Well, I guess we were heading in different directions musically and we couldn't agree on what to do, that's basically the truth about the matter. I wanted to be in a band and they had a different philosophy of the situation. In the old days people used to work together and write music, now people sit at home and they write and program stuff and make their own demos – people don't meet that often anymore. I think that makes the results less interesting and it's not as solid in the end, and as a singer you're limited when you have to put melody lines and write lyrics on top of something that's already composed. I feel the music becomes stronger if you work more like a band, this is my recipe when I'm working on Jorn records, working with the guitarists, and I think the songs are more to the point and simplified. There's an old saying that "Less is more" and that's where I'm coming from, I just wanted Masterplan to be coming to a point with the songwriting instead of making big orchestral parts and intricate stuff. This way I just felt limited and that's why I left – we just couldn't come to an agreement and meet in the middle."

And I understand the other guys weren't happy with all the other projects you were doing, was that another part of the reason?

"Well, not really. Obviously they didn't appreciate my projects – I have always been a musician and been interested in being creative with many different people – when I'm in just one band things take too long and I get bored, I don't feel like waiting two years between each release. Also I write songs all the time and I thought also that Masterplan didn't really come to the point that I was looking for – I don't know how to explain it, the band just didn't seem to work in a way that I'm used to working, I just felt the urge to become better as an artist and move in different directions so that the band could be better and sound stronger. Also, another thing is that when you play a lot of festivals and you tour the world, you also start to discover the weaknesses in a band, and I discovered that one of the weaknesses was that my own performances weren't the best because I always had to push myself to the limit with my vocals, because of the musical landscapes we were heading into – changing from singing something melodic and high with a thin voice to suddenly opening up in a more opera oriented sense. I just felt like I was always a chameleon instead of having something solid like a simple rock song, and I felt like our whole performance just became weak because there was not enough air, the music didn't breathe. A lot of the classic rock bands that I grew up with always sounded better and more powerful, which goes back to "Less is more"."

Is that why ‘The Duke' was more of a hard rock record than what you'd done before?

"I think so. ‘The Duke' to me is my strongest solo album ever. It might not be the most artistic or original but it's to the point - you know exactly what you get when you put that album on. I think when you look at it in total it's definitely one of my best records ever – I think the production is good and when the music gets a chance to breathe then you get a better overall sound, it's easier to sound good when you don't have too much going on. The band will sound more open and tighter, and it's easier to express yourself when you have more control over what you're doing, and it creates a better impression as an artist. It's good not to end up falling between two stools and I think I've done that with too many releases in the past, even though people after a while have started to worship some of these albums – some of these albums might have been great when they came out but I feel that maybe some of them have been a little bit too strange, and people into rock or metal would prefer to buy the new Judas Priest or Iron Maiden – something that they can define. On some of my previous releases I've experimented, or the band have experimented a lot, moving into different landscapes and trying alternative combinations. Creatively that's a good and fresh thing to do of course, but I think it's important to look at what's the best quality and what the people really like about your work, and I feel that the most important thing now is to establish my own identity and ‘The Duke' represents something that people can grab hold of and relate to."

So are you going to concentrate just on your solo career or have you got other projects in the works as well?

"Actually I've just finished another record together with Russell Allen. We did one before called ‘The Battle' and this new record is called ‘The Revenge' and should be released somewhere around the spring. I also did a project with Ken Hensley, formerly of Uriah Heep, and Glenn Hughes is on that album also – it's a record called ‘Blood On The Highway' and it's a conceptual album all about the seventies. That was an interesting thing to do, not really the typical hard rock and metal that I'm used to, but it was great to work with such a powerful and legendary songwriter and be on the same record as Glenn Hughes. There's also a woman on that, her name is Eve Gallagher and she sings a song as well, and I'm also writing material for my next forthcoming Jorn album, but I don't think that will be out until early 2008. It's definitely going to be written and recorded sometime during this year."

So who's idea was it to put out ‘Unlocking The Past' and ‘The Gathering'?

"In the beginning I was asked to re-release some of my earlier albums. My debut from 2000, ‘Starfire', was more or less a demo album – that's the way I look at it because everything was recorded with the intention of recording it again later. The sound of that album wasn't the best – the players are great and the performance is good, but the sound of that album is poor and I thought it would be good to remix or re-record some of the songs, which I thought were great hard rocking songs but were drowning on this album amongst the cover versions, which were more AOR oriented songs. I felt a couple of my own songs were disappearing on that album due to the bad production and them being different in style to the rest of it, and I always had in my mind a big sounding version of ‘Abyss Of Evil' which should have been done. In a way I did this with some of my songs instead of re-releasing whole albums, and saw it as an opportunity to put together some of the songs I thought could have been done better. Also, some of my newer fans don't really know everything from the past so I feel that ‘The Gathering' is like a new album to them, and I hope some of my older fans will be interested to hear some of the new recordings and remixes on this album because it's such a big improvement giving these songs a facelift. Thing's like ‘Something Real', ‘Young Forever' and ‘One Day We Will Put Out The Sun' were originally on ‘Out To Every Nation' but I thought they came out weaker than they should have done. When I recorded that album I was convinced that those songs would be amongst the strongest tracks, but when the album came out they weren't really the strongest. I'm always working so I never really get the chance to analyse things or brainstorm things, I try to be impulsive and spontaneous with my albums to get that live feel, but afterwards I always find different arrangements that might have been better. That's what happened – I think ‘Something Real' was a little more progressive and intricate sounding in the way it originally came out, but I just heard it later as something simpler and to the point. I'm really into that kind of focus these days, getting things to the point – I've experimented a lot in my music and tried different combinations, and all the musicians in the band would be totally free to put their own individuality into the songs – sometimes that can be great and work really well but I've found that when everyone has the same vision songs usually turn out stronger. That's how I'm thinking these days and I think you can hear that on ‘The Duke'."

"With ‘Worldchanger', that was a great album already I thought, but I tried to take out the tracks I thought were the strongest on the album, so I think you could say that I did this instead of re-releasing all of my earlier albums, I just wanted to put some of my best songs in a new package that to some of my newer fans would seem to be a new album. Things happened to me in the last year and a half since I started work on ‘The Duke' – my career got better and bigger from being in Masterplan and I spoke to a lot of fans who didn't know these albums existed, so to these people this is a new album."

"I also have a re-recording here from one of my previous bands, Ark. It's a song called ‘Where The Winds Blow', and again that was a demo situation – the first Ark album was a demo that was presented to the label with the intention of rerecording the album later, but the record company liked it so much that they wanted to put it out as an album. We just discussed it and settled on re-mixing the album as well as possible – but it was put out there and the production was pretty weak. I thought that song was the most Jorn-ish on the album and I always liked it, so I always wanted to re-record that song and make it sound how it should. We changed the arrangements slightly."

So how much of ‘Unlocking The Past' was re-recorded?

"Some of these songs were basically leftovers or bonus tracks from my past. The ones that were new - ‘Fool For Your Loving' was from 2003, ‘Cold Sweat' and ‘Lonely Is The Word/Letters From Earth' were from a year and a half ago, whilst ‘Burn' is basically the same track as the one from ‘Starfire' in 2000 but I replaced all the guitars and removed some of the keyboards. The rest of it is just the way it was, it just needed a better mix. ‘Kill The King' was about four or five years old, ‘Perfect Strangers' was from around 2004, but they were all done during the recordings of other albums, some for ‘Out To Every Nation' and some for ‘The Duke', but they were never finished or mixed, they were just lying there in the drawer. Sometimes you record extra tracks in case you do an EP or need b-sides for a single, but those things just didn't happen."

So why did you put out two albums at the same time?

"That was to make a compromise between myself and Frontiers. At first I wanted to do a double CD, but because it's not a typical ‘Best Of..' and doesn't contain all of my best songs, I just made the compromise to separate the originals from the covers. Originally I was just going to put two or three covers on ‘The Gathering' and a few more originals to make a double CD, but Frontiers wanted to include more covers so I compromised and put together two separate CD's. I guess Frontiers wanted to have two products to sell and also because ‘Unlocking The Past' seems to be a new, or at least a fresh release."

So have you left AFM as a solo artist now?

"That's the plan (laughs), to move on, and I'm hoping to work more with Frontiers in the future. I'm still supposed to deliver one more album for AFM but I'm just in the middle of discussing that right now since I'm not planning or scheduling a future relationship with them. I don't think it's in their biggest interests to keep me on the label, so at the moment I'm kind of caught in the middle, like Dio sings (laughs). You'll definitely see future releases on Frontiers records."

Do you plan to tour extensively as a solo artist?

"If I can get a good tour going I will do so. Touring is a completely different situation compared to the recording industry. It's easy to do the touring if you tour all the time, but I'm always out there with different bands and I never really established Jorn as a live act – it's a great live act and a very powerful band that I have, it's a special and rare line-up and I can't wait to get out there. It's would be nice to make it happen but if you want to play proper venues you have to work your way up there – I don't want to be arrogant but I don't want to play all the unnecessary clubs, I've done that for many years now and I just want to play good venues when I come out to play. I'm working with a German agency now and I want to try to get as many festivals as I can. It's always up to the promoters and what they want."

Are you going to go back to doing as many other projects as you were before you joined Masterplan?

"No, not really – I don't want to do that. I won't be doing any new band concepts or anything unless something special turns up, I've decided just to focus on my Jorn band because I think that's the best thing to try to establish right now. I'll finish the DVD I've been working on in the next year – I already did the recordings for that when I was doing some gigs in the States last year. I did one really good gig at the ProgPower show – it was a great moment and a good crowd there. It'll take time if I'm going to edit everything properly and make it look really professional, it's a really raw and totally live performance because I don't like to fake things on a live recording like many people do today. They re-record everything and it's not really a live recording anymore, so I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way like my old heroes used to do it. If we made mistakes we will keep them, but if they're too bad I will just take the song out (laughs), I'd rather do that than patch it up so it's not really live anymore."

I'm a big fan of your guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad.

"Yes, he has a very unique style. My other guitarist Tore Moren is more like a Zakk Wylde/Randy Rhoads type of player so, in a way I've got the best of both worlds – Tore comes from that more rough and raw, anti-polished sound, he just has a strong tone – it's really powerful and he has a strong identity – he has no need to try to impress and show off – he's like the cowboy of the band. Mr. Lofstad is more of a technical and clean type of guitarist – he's a perfectionist and the most structured of my guitarists, he's influenced by Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai – so like I said, I have the best of both worlds. Together they are so massive and powerful, and that's how the band sounds live – just a great classic hard rock band. I have Willy Bendicksen on drums, who played with me in The Snakes – he's from the old school and in style he's similar to drummers like Cozy Powell, Brian Downey, Vinny Appice and Bill Ward. That style is like a dying breed and even though you still hear drummers in the style of John Bonham there aren't many young drummers playing the old style, and Willy isn't really that young (laughs), he's the older generation and plays with a powerful expression. New and modern drummers are maybe more technical and they play more intricately with lots of bass drum, but I think they play more with the wrists, they don't really hit the drums and put a physical power in every beat. I think we'll be a great alternative or a good contrast in the current metal market, even in commercial melodic metal we're a bit different. A lot of the music I hear is very static and without too much heart in their performance – I think that has something to do with the way recording has developed, the way people make albums. They use pro-tools and computers more as an instrument instead of as a tool, and people make records everywhere – at home or on the tourbus or in the garage, and you don't even have to be the best players to make a good sounding record – so what separates the good artists from the bad must be the delivery. People are starting to notice the old bands that are still doing it, because they may not be the best players but what they do is something real (laughs) like in the song. That's what the world needs – I think programming too much and quantifying everything and moving bits and pieces around on a computer, I think it's making the music too sterile and static. When you go into the studio and the drums are already programmed, then the drummer comes in and plays on top of the programmed drums – when you do that it leaves no room for anything spontaneous and magical to happen."

Hasn't the new Allen-Lande been recorded exactly that way?

"That's correct yes! The production on that album was just done in Sweden by Magnus Karlsson, the guitar player and song writer, he's taking care of most of the production, as he did with the previous album, but that concept is more tailor made for me and Russell. You could say that musically it's not that personal to us but the songwriting is really fitting our voices and we can give a personal touch to these songs and make it our own. It sounds great when you put it on the stereo and it's perfect, but it's definitely not my cup of tea."

Do you think you lose a bit of feeling by doing an album this way?

"Yes, that's what I'm thinking – the whole magic of music is for it to naturally move up and down in tempo, but when you program everything it becomes perfect but you lose that heart. I think that's what separates the best albums from the good ones, the heart. Even my previous albums – with Masterplan I'm proud to have done two great albums with that band – they're great albums and they sound terrific but the personality of that whole concept is not that strong. You can hear that there's a lot of programming going on, a lot of computers involved, everything is built on working that way, and to me that will always sound a little sterile. That's not a bad thing if you like it – tastes are different and people have different opinions – but I grew up in the 70's so it's hard for me to prefer that kind of ‘development' in music. I'd like to try to bring back some of the old-fashioned elements. There's also a theoretical aspect to it. Theoretically there are many things that you can do with a computer in the studio and with writing songs, but if they have to be performed live in the future then that's another question. If you do something on a computer before you've tried to do it live then it can sometimes be very difficult to re-create it when you play live – it's not natural and it's not organic, and that's what I discovered. You can get through it with practice and experience but it's not something I enjoy doing. There's a certain point where you need to feel good about what you're doing and the reason I started in the music business was organic, classic quality rock music. If that's gone then I might as well start working with something else in life. In the future if I'm not comfortable with a situation or the music that I'm making, then I'd rather not be a part of it."