I for one am extremely 
excited at the news of a new band called Northward due to my love of Dutch singer Floor Jansen from not only Nightwish but also After Forever along with Star One and several Ayreon albums. She has joined forces with Pagan’s Mind guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad. The twosome started playing and performing together at Prog Fest USA back in 2007 where they had a lot of fun playing a bunch of covers in the all-star band. 2018 sees them releasing an album via Nuclear Blast Records.
The pair wrote a batch of songs about 10 years ago but never actually recorded and released them. However, with breaks in their schedules, they have revisited them and finally are going to release them to the rock and metal world!
In 2017 they got together along with Morty Black from TNT on bass and two drummers between the songs in Django Nilsen and Stian Kristoffersen (also Pagan’s Mind) to record the album which to quote Floor “is melodic but also in your face kick ass rock”. She also says that they wanted an album which was guitar bass drums and vocals a “real basic rock sound” not with layers of keyboards.
Also featured on the forthcoming album is Irene Jansen who is Floor’s sister and duets with her on “Drifting Islands” and Ronnie Tegner (also from Pagan’s Mind) who plays the piano at one point.
The music is apparently a mix of bands like Skunk Anansie, Foo Fighters, Alter Bridge along with Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, which is a bit different from the norm for these musicians.
I leave you with the words of Floor herself who says “We have put our heart and soul into this album. We are very proud of it and we can’t wait to show it to you all.”
Northward FACEBOOK
Picture by courtesy of Hannes Van Dahl 2017.
