There are occasions as if I was bound to attend a play, a theatrical fair, the unison of sound and image. Right out of nowhere, I was introduced to this Swedish based project / band named JONO. Bearing a name that also raised a few eyebrows; I was rapidly in league with modern kind of Symphonic Rock stirring its gaze into Hard Rock and the emotional tainted AOR. The band released recently its debut deliverance, "Silence", which was quite the opposite of its title. For one thing, this is certainly not a band that would even be reminiscent to true 80's AOR, but far beyond.

The first thing that I thought to myself listening to "Silence" was what would happen if QUEEN and YES would be conjured into a single entity. Well, there you then. Slowly I found elements of the AORish nature of Journey along with the slight awkwardness of late era of THE WHO with the "Pinball Wizard" alignment as chief example. JONO are rather easy to hook up with. Their music is not cheesy or overly marketable, almost a contradiction of what could be expected of such a record, and the songs are quite developed. There is a fine measure of diversity, between profound rockers such as "Your Bread" and "In My Life" to the mega powerful moments of Rock truth with "Turn Around" and "Opus". The former really had the influence on me, especially with the heavenly vocals and driving lead guitar essence.

Essentially, "Silence" is like an overall melodramatic event divided into several pieces which are basically different but have a related feel all the same. Johan Norrby, the man behind the voice, is a true passionate, and with his velvet vocal line took the album by storm. As if the rest of the band was a mere setting at his service, Norrby played the main role in this musical to champion it flawlessly and strikingly. Not that the band itself didn't rocked it out, along with Stefan Helleblad of WITHIN TEMPTATION guitaring it to perfection, but there was a reason why Norrby was selected to take the mic.

"Silence" is one of those albums that you would wish that it would continue its magnitude for the next releases, let's hope that this is what would exactly happen with album number two.