QUEEN OF THE OCEAN

Finally Lana Lane is on PA!!! I was wondering when this great singer would be featured here. And now I´m glad that I can finally review the first CD I heard of her. I remember I was walking past a CD store when I heard her singing and was imediatly amazed by her voice. I bought the album right away and I still think it´s one of her best ever. For the ones not very familiar with her name, she is the wife of Erik Norlander (Rocket Scientists), a terrific player who also arranges, engineers and produces her CDs, plus do some songwriting. Lane has a incredible voice, very strong and unique that places in a league of her own. Fortunatly, she is also a team player and her discography serves as a great display of skillful musicians and fine instrumental parts as well as her powerful vocals.

I always thought that her mixture of progressive keys, hard rock guitars, pop sensibilities and nice vocal harmonies as something quite original and yet very accessible. it is no coincidence she has a very ecletic audience, being appreciated equally by metallers, progheads and pop fans. And certainly Queen Of The Ocean is her crowning achievement. Sorrounded by som eof the best musicians around: Norlander on keyboards, guitarrist and singer Mark McCrite (also from Rocket Scientists), bassist Tony Franklin (The Firm), lead guitarrist Neil Citron and drummer Tommy Amato.

The tracklist is quite impressive and varied: there you have the 9+ minute progressive epic of the title track (yes, with lots of instrumental parts), the heavy prog tune Night Falls (one of the many highlights of the album), the almost heavy metal Frankenstein Unbound (a perfect display of her powerhouse vocals and blistering guitar/moog/hammond solos), as well as soulful ballads (Let Heaven In, Without You). Lane can sing just about anything. All tracks are very well performed, laced with creative and tasteful arrangements, featuring the 70´s vintage sound of Norlander´s keys..

For the lucky ones like me, who could get a hold on the CD edition with three bonus tracks, the treat was even better: Throught The Rain is a fine exemple of how the band work as whole with some absolutely amazing vocal harmonies (plus another outstanding guitar/Hammond solos), while the live recordings of two Lana Lane´s classic, best known songs, Escher´s Staircase and Symphony Of Angels are simply perfect and quite superior to their studio original versions. the latter is probably her best song ever and this perfomance is absolutely breathtaking, just listen to the instrumental fills and the subtle, but gorgeous, drumming at the end.

The crystal clear sound (courtesy of the ever talented Norlander both as engineer and producer) makes this one of the most interesting albums of my entire collection. Simply essential to anyone who likes exquisite melodies with elaborated arrangements and magnificient playing.

Rating: even if Queen Of the Ocean is not entirely progressive, there´s no denying that this is a true classic, and a must have for anyone who likes melodic progressive rock. 5 stars with honors.

The queen of Symphonic Rock

This is Lana Lane's fourth studio album, coming only one year after the previous Garden Of The Moon. The material presented here is generally up to par with the very strong material of the previous three albums, and as such Queen Of The Ocean is indeed another excellent Lana Lane album. The remarkable consistency of the band's studio output is very impressive indeed, coming up with new material of equally high quality in such a short time; they seem to be unable to do anything wrong!

Queen Of The Ocean utilizes well the established formula of that previous album, which is both a benefit and in some sense also perhaps a slight handicap. The "problem", which is not really a problem at all, is that this is nothing less, but also nothing more, than just another excellent Lana Lane album. It fails to significantly push the boundaries of band's sound beyond those of the previous album. This would, however, be achieved with their next album, Secrets Of Astrology. As such, the band's greatest moments were still ahead of them at this time. Having this said, there are lots of strong moments here that certainly make this album an essential addition to any Lana Lane collection, and a fine addition to a Prog collection. Frankenstein Unbound is probably the track with the strongest progressive aspects.

Excellent companion to Garden Of The Moon, deserving of the same rating

3.5 really

Lana Lane is one of my fav. female singer ever, he has a very powerful voice but yet can be very gentle and touching. She has a prolific career for more then 20 years, many albums released and many collaborations with other artists such as with her husband Erik Norlander or with Ayreon and a devoting fan base around the world. I'm one of her fans since this forth album was released in 1999 named Queen of the ocean. From the evocative cover art to the music this album is a winner to me. Alternating more melow passges in baladesque form to more up tempo moments Lana Lane manage to capture my attention. The music Lana Lane offers is a cross between Rainbow in her most rockier phase combined with very nice symphonic passages and aswell some progressive touches here and there, the result is always quite intresting like on 9 plus min title track Queen of the Ocean, where her voice shine. As a whole the album is more then ok, but is little to mellow in many parts, only sporadicaly the band gives more balls to the music. Anyway I like her voice and her album and for that 3 solid stars rounded to 3.5 in places. The next album is much better and is my fav Lana Lane album ever - Secrets of astrology.