Jorn Lande’s day job is the lead singer for the German band Masterplan which features Roland Grapow on guitar and Uli Kusch on drums formerly with Helloween. His resume includes work with the short lived progressive band Ark, Millenium, The Snakes (with Bernie Marsden and Mickey Moody of Whitesnake and Don Airey of Rainbow/ Ozzy Osbourne and Deep Purple), and several solo albums. Last year his solo album "Out to All Nations" was one of my Top Ten of 2005 as it was solid well rounded Hard Rock/Metal in the spirit of Whitesnake’s "Slide it In".

Once again Jorn has captured the energy and compositions from that disc and carried over to "The Duke". His vocals can be compared to David Coverdale and that soulful tone really comes through on the bluesy title track. Jorn has a knack for surrounding himself with the best players for both band and solo projects. Last time it was musician’s bassist Magnus Rosèn of Hammerfall, alongside the Pagan's Mind pairing of guitarist Jørn Viggo Lofstad and drummer Stian Kristoffersen. For “The Duke” Pagan’s MInd guitarist Jorn has returned along with Morty Black from TNT playing bass.

"The Duke" has a bit of a thicker guitar sound and the production again is top notch. Tracks I recommend are 'We Brought the Angels Down', 'Blacksong', 'End of Time', and 'Midnight Madness', but then again there's no filler.

Jorn also does a cover of Thin Lizzy’s 'Are You Ready' which is true to the original and Jorn’s top shelf vocals give nothing but respect to Phil Lynott.

You can add to his already respectable career headlining this year’s 2006 edition of ProgPower in Atlanta, the States premier Power/Progressive Metal festival.