What Joe Bonamassa managed to do with the blues - to get him out of the old man's mess and back into the limelight - The Night Flight Orchestra could succeed with the AOR. The Swedish melodic rockers are just delivering their fourth album and are dusting off a genre that has not only had an image problem in recent decades, but has also all too often frozen in clichés. Björn Strid and his band are in love with these standards and provide them with a fun factor of ten.
Their new album "Sometimes The World Ain't Big Enough" makes the heart of every AOR fan beat faster. In addition, The Night Flight Orchestra are so enthusiastic about their work that people who usually avoid this subgenre are suddenly listening. For last year's album "Amber Galactic" singer Björn Strid said that he wished the listeners to "have their eyes wide open and their eyes horny and slightly drunk". Such statements give you an idea that the musicians in the Night Flight Orchestra otherwise like it more hearty. Musically this is certainly true, because before they launched the band eleven years ago, Strid and guitarist David Andersson from Soilwork were known, while Sharlee D'Angelo attracted attention as bassist of Arch Enemy and Spiritual Beggars. The trio consistently pursued one goal: to give their secret love AOR a band home. Through the activities of their main bands, however, they were so involved that it took until 2012 for the Melodic Rock Orchestra to really take off with "Internal Affairs" for the first time. Keyboarder Richard Larsson and drummer Jonas Källsbäck were also there. For the successor "Skyline Whispers" (2015) the team strengthened with percussionist/guitarist Sebastian Forslund. And since the background singers Anna-Mia Bonde and Anna Brygård joined the band in 2017, one can really speak of a mini orchestra.
eclipsed: Are you now completely on the bridge of the Night Flight Orchestra with the two Annas?
Björn Strid: Let me put it this way: Our world is getting bigger and more colourful. But as the saying goes: The sky is the limit. Look at Toto, they always have lots of people on stage and none of them are superfluous. Neither do we.
eclipsed: Journey, on the other hand, has always had enough of throwing their melodic classic rock into the audience with normal rock quintet strength.
Strid: When you see Journey live, it's more like a hard rock band playing ballads from time to time, while Toto wants to bring in all the facets they have in the studio. Our position must be somewhere in the middle. We're also pushing the limits of the club stages we're playing on now, from the field.
eclipsed: So, if things go really well, is another pianist the least we can do?
Strid: Do we think so far? No! No! No! I'm surprised myself how much we enjoy this project and that there are so many people who like it as much as we do. In addition, you have to reconcile what you want with what you can afford.
eclipsed: The breakthrough to the now existing, but still manageable popularity was probably "Amber Galactic" and the support of the then new record company Nuclear Blast. They are known to push things they believe in accordingly.
Strid: Right, if we screw it up now, we can't blame any company, we can blame ourselves.
