A consistent force in the rock/metal world, The Night Flight Orchestra made a name for themselves for creating a nostalgic ’70s/’80s AOR sound that was full of fun and bringing in other elements, such as prog and disco, as they saw fit. Two years ago, they suffered a heavy loss with guitarist David Andersson’s passing (who formed the band with vocalist Björn Strid), but they’ve returned with a new label [Napalm Records] and a seventh album in Give Us the Moon. An album that has maintained the high bar for adventurous rock, and sees them continue forward full-speed ahead. We spoke with Strid about continuing on without Andersson, the band’s slogan of ‘Death to False AOR,’ the space and sky themes, adapting to a life on the road with age, and much more.
Dead Rhetoric: You had announced that both Soilwork and The Night Flight Orchestra would continue after the loss of David [Andersson]. Do you feel there’s a certain bar you have to keep to in order to honor his time with the bands? Particularly since you two started Night Flight together?
Björn Strid: Yeah, I guess in a way. We started [The Night Flight Orchestra] together and it was our own little dream and it is surreal that he is no longer here. But having that talk with him, on his deathbed, it was quite dark but it was very beautiful in many ways. I feel like a lot of responsibility to carry on to carry on the legacy that we started. It was important for me, not that I needed to ask him to continue, but I think it was important for me and I think everybody else in the band too. I think the biggest challenge for us has been to sort of step into his world. He was composing in such a special way. He had a unique expression lyrically too. You can’t really copy that. But I have known the man for a very long time and we worked very close.
I feel like he is still very present, even though he is not physically here. We had to step into his world a little bit more and sort of broaden our palette as songwriters, and try to find that and take it with us somehow. I think we succeeded. It was quite a journey to go through this. There was a lot of grieving involved, but it later turned into a big celebration and a lot of joy, somehow. The last few years he was with us, it was quite dark. But now, you look back and you only see the good times. You feel good inside when you think about him, and you miss his laughter. I’m sad that he is no longer here, but I think with this album, we have definitely taken him with us.
It was really tough in the beginning, since we have been recording in the same studio, Nordic Sound Lab, and we have been there for over 10 years recording stuff. We were worried about how it was going to feel there. It felt sort of empty but then we sort of filled the room. He felt very present, and you could see him walking through the corridors, in his underwear drinking beer [laughs] like he used to. He always recorded his guitar solos in his underwear as well. He was very present and we had so much fun. It was a great thing. We made the most out of it and we managed to turn it around. It’s not easy to do that. We feel like we are giving life to his creation. We started the band, but he felt very present with the band in everything we were doing.
Dead Rhetoric: I think it’s important too, like you were saying, you were having fun with it. As someone who has listened to the band since the start, it’s important that you have that fun element. It’s one of the first things I think of when I am going to describe The Night Flight Orchestra.
Strid: Yeah, it is. Even though it’s very multi-layered, I think it’s a good, simple word to describe the band. It’s fun listening to it. It takes you on a journey, and that’s what we want it to do. We managed to move between genres almost on the same album, and have it still sound like us. It’s really cool. You don’t hear that so much nowadays, but in the ‘70s and ‘80s it was sort of the norm. You could have different music styles on the same album. You could have a reggae song and then have a progressive, 7-minute song. It’s a lost tradition somehow.
Dead Rhetoric: Just looking at metal genres, everything has to go into that nice, neat box nowadays. There’s that aversion to risk, at least with a lot of the newer stuff.
Strid: That’s true, and I come from that world as well, and I kind of like being inside that box with Soilwork. I think we have evolved a lot, and we have managed to develop extreme metal in our own special way. But there are still limits. You are sort of contained, and that’s fine. I enjoy being in that little cage with Soilwork. Then with Night Flight, I just go absolutely mental. Which doesn’t always mean that it’s going to be good, but I think it’s a good thing for us. There are no limits. We are the ‘anything goes’ band. Like, ‘Can we really do that?’ Yes, of course. We are The Night Flight Orchestra, so we can do that. So in that sense, we are very over-the-top. It’s not about showing off, but it’s so much fun to have this open field to do whatever you want.
Dead Rhetoric: With Soilwork, you have the box and a limit, but there are ways to play around within it. With total freedom, is there ever the thought of getting stuck because of too much freedom?
Strid: So far, no [laughs]. I get what you are saying, because maybe it could be bad with too much freedom but we haven’t pulled a Brian Wilson and had goats in the studio yet [laughs]. That’s where things can go pretty wrong. I guess that’s mostly the drugs that are doing that. But since we are mostly drug-free and really high on being able to do whatever we want, I think it’s a beautiful thing. There are so many creations that can come out of this band. It’s so multi-layered. There’s an ABBA tradition as well, Swedish bands always have to mention ABBA, but so does everyone else I guess. Who is not inspired by ABBA? I think they had that real balance. On paper, they are ‘that disco band from Sweden,’ but they were so much more than that. They had quite melancholic stuff as well, even though it was uplifting at the same time, so there’s that tradition as well. It’s a guiding star in many ways.
Dead Rhetoric: What else do you think feels special about Give Us the Moon?
Strid: It’s very special. It’s very complete – we have been having our slogan ‘Death to False AOR,’ album oriented rock, [laughs] so we need to live up to that. I know it was never really AOR, it was always ‘airline oriented rock, so there’s always a plan B! But I feel like it is very complete as an album in a time where it’s all about singles. We are throwing out singles as well, and that’s also important to us, but we always want to create something where the songs are somehow connected even though we really want them to stand out from each other. That’s the biggest challenge. I think we had to dig really deep for this album and it was one of the toughest albums for us to make. On a personal level, to dig really deep to make ourselves proud and David proud and show all the doubters that we can still pull this off.
I feel like there is nothing we could have done to make a better album, and that’s a great feeling. We have done everything we could. It’s something to be proud of, and I think it’s turned out to be something really special. It’s an explosion of emotions. It’s so full of emotions, and I hope our listeners can hear that. There’s so much sincere emotion in there, and when you blend that up with a good old disco beat [laughs] there’s definitely some magic in that. There’s so much more than disco, but that was just an example.
Dead Rhetoric: To your point on ‘Death to False AOR,’ The Night Flight Orchestra started up before much of the current ‘retro rock’ movement started. Why do you think the sound has sort of picked up and become a revival so to speak?
Strid: It’s hard to say. Now there are so many bands calling themselves AOR. It’s enough to just have distorted guitars and ‘80s oriented keyboards on top of it. To me, AOR is so much more than that. It’s a way of composing, performing, and playing that has been lost for a long time. But there’s a lot coming out, and some of it is very synthwave influenced…not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I don’t know. Everything is becoming like a Miami Vice version of AOR [laughs]. I love Miami Vice and all that ‘80s nostalgia. But I feel that for us, it’s a really timeless thing that needs to stand the test of time.
We see a lot of bands with wrestling glasses on and big ‘80s keyboards and an ironic mustache, I can enjoy that too. I’m not being snobby about it, but I don’t know if it will stand the test of time. I feel like we stick out a bit and I feel we are a bit braver in that field. I believe we have a pretty unique expression. But then again, we wear our influences on our sleeves. But it’s very diverse. We aren’t afraid to do anything, really. I have been rehearsing the setlist a bit today for the upcoming tour. I can’t remember the song from the new album, but I was wondering if it was ‘too soft,’ and now I am listening back to “Domino” and if we can do that, we can do anything! Even back in those times, I was like, I love this song and wanted to throw it out there but wondered if people were going to think that it’s a step too far. But people loved it.
People really feel that we are doing it in a very sincere way. There’s a lot of nostalgia, but there’s so much more than that. I think that’s why we have so many metal fans. They like black metal, but somehow they like The Night Flight Orchestra as well, because they can feel the presence in the music that we are sincere. You can’t really fool a metalhead. Some of them might not like it, but they respect it because they know that it’s sincere.
Dead Rhetoric: I personally came into Night Flight by following Soilwork, but do you feel that there’s a significant portion of The Night Flight Orchestra fanbase that came to you independently of Soilwork or the metalhead route at this point?
Strid: Yes, you hear that a lot more. It’s pretty funny that now it’s quite often that people come up now and they say that they just found out that I’m a singer in a metal band as well. It’s really cool to hear that people go the other way, discovering Soilwork through Night Flight when metal might not be their thing. Maybe that is opening some doors to other metal bands, and that’s a beautiful thing. I think that the band has a unifying factor in that sense. At our shows too, it’s a very mixed crowd. There’s prog dads, hipster girls with braces in the front, guys with Behemoth patches to college kids. Everyone is looking at each other like, “what are you doing here? [laughs] but they are sort of dancing together at the end of the night.
Dead Rhetoric: There’s always been a consistent bit of imagery with the band with space and the moon, even with the band’s name. Is that something that you keep within the group at this point – a quick identification point?
Strid: I think that’s sort of symbolic for the escapism that runs through our music and all, as well as lyrically. But when David was alive he was reading so many books a week, like urban fantasies. He always wanted to escape somewhere else. Whereas I was sort of fine being in reality. He sort of introduced me to his escapism and took me away on his little journeys and I had to keep him grounded somehow [laughs]. But he made me discover space and escapism. Of course, I like to escape every once in a while as well. I’m a bit of a dreamer and always was as a kid. I loved where music could take me. That’s a beautiful thing to dream away with music. I remember coming home from school and taking a nap while listening to music. You were half-sleeping and listening to the music in this dreamstate and I love that.
But I would say that the space element is important to us and it was mostly David who introduced us to that. But we want to take it with us. The contrast between reality and escapism. On the new album, there are a lot of lyrics that are real life stories. You have that contrast with more spaced out stuff, and I like that contrast so we work a lot with that.
Dead Rhetoric: Personally, how do you adapt between a life on the road and a life at home? How do you prioritize getting older and having some sort of life outside of music?
Strid: It’s not getting easier with age. I have two bands, so I never really get to rest. We are trying to do album cycles so that we don’t do everything at the same time. It’s not as much of a party on the road as it used to be. Though Night Flight has a bit more of a tendency to become a party. I hide, basically [laughs]. I need to pick my battles a lot more. When the other guys come home, they get to rest and it’s the same situation for Rasmus [Ehrnborn] too. He is playing bass in Soilwork and guitar for The Night Flight Orchestra. But the switch is very easy, and somewhere in between, I try to do things that have nothing to do with music but it’s super hard. It is very hard. I try to stay in shape and work out.
I don’t know what I can do that has nothing to do with music. I like to go to flea markets and look at antiques. That’s something that has been there since I was a kid because my grandmother had an antiques store. It’s really therapeutic for me, to sort of shut off the music. I think that’s important. There’s so much music all the time. You need to shut it off in order to appreciate it. I’ve noticed that I think a lot of people can relate.
I’m not listening to as much music – it’s all podcasts and they can be brilliant. But it’s sad that I don’t listen to as much music anymore. Recently I started forcing myself to and say no to another podcast that would be on in the background. You aren’t even listening, there’s just someone talking in your ear. It’s weird how that works. But now I am listening to full albums and no playlists. I have been writing down entire discographies even, like Steely Dan or something. They are one of my absolute favorite bands. But music is always there, so it’s only natural to shut it off once in a while and listen to a podcast about sports or whatever.
Dead Rhetoric: What are your plans for this year? You are playing ProgPower, is there any possibility of more US dates?
Strid: Yes, there is a chance. We are definitely working on getting a few more shows or a tour. Visa costs have tripled! It’s insane. Plus the tour bus and all that, it’s really hard to pull off. We are eight people and we need at least some sort of crew. But this is the seventh album and we know we have a growing fanbase in North America and we need to get out there. We would love to and we are working hard so fingers crossed.
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