Northward – Northward

Northward is Nightwish singer Floor Jansen and Pagan’s mind guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad. The pair met in 2007 and in 2008 wrote an entire album’s worth of material together, but never managed to find time to record them. In 2017 they got in touch again and finally recorded the album with Jacob Hansen as producer.

Alongside Floor and Jorn, Morty Black (TNT) played bass, while drums were played by Jango Nilsen and Stian Kristoffersen (Pagan’s Mind). Another Pagan’s mind member appears on the album too – Ronny Tegner played the piano on one song.
Floor’s sister Irene Jansen also makes an appearance, singing a duet on the song “Drifting Islands”.

Over the years I’ve heard a lot of Floor’s vocals, in After Forever, Revamp, Nightwish and even Ayreon, and in most of those she’s used her more operatic vocal style as well as some growling, but with Northward it’s a very different style of vocals – more hard rock than symphonic metal.

Check out the video for opening track “While love died”…

That gives a pretty good idea what to expect from the album as it’s pretty representative of the album. It’s an album where you never feel the desire to skip a track – it’s consistently good from start to finish.

This is no mere vehicle for Floor to show off her vocals though – this is proper rock with great songs and featuring plenty of great guitar work whether thats riffs or solos. It’s an album that’s likely to appeal to fans of bands such as Halestorm. This is an album that’s been 10 years in the making but it’s proved to be well worth the wait.

A great rock record.

Track listing:

1. While love died
2. Get what you give
3. Storm in a glass
4. Drifting islands
5. Paragon
6. Let me out
7. Big boy
8. Timebomb
9. Bridle passion
10. I need
11. Northward