On the Wings of Would-Be Eighties Hits with The Night Flight Orchestra in Vienna (2025)
The Night Flight Orchestra (special guests: Metalite)
Friday, February 14, 2025 (start: 8:00 PM, end: 11:00 PM)
Vienna (Wien) / Szene / Austria
The Night Flight Orchestra! No, they’re not Electric Light Orchestra — these are the night fliers. I don’t even know where to begin, my head is spinning with associations right now. This is a band that’s already built up serious clout on the old continent — Germany and Scandinavia are theirs. But this kind of music has a harder time breaking through in our neck of the woods. That’s pretty much a standing tradition on the sunny side of the Alps. Either way, Vienna is at least within reasonable reach for those of us who are a bit picky — the musical outcasts of these parts. The band is made up of members from top-tier acts (Soliwork, Arch Enemy, Mean Streak). To date, The Night Flight Orchestra have racked up millions of streams and earned three nominations for the Swedish Grammis award. These guys are no joke!
The octet was founded in 2007 by Soilwork members (the sadly far-too-soon-departed) David Andersson and vocalist Björn “Speed” Strid — because despite their sworn allegiance to melodic death metal through their main band, both had always had a huge soft spot for arena (and glam) rock, progressive rock, even the disco rhythms of the late seventies (no surprise there — ABBA’s legacy runs through Swedish DNA), as well as the west coast/AOR explosion of the eighties. And so The Night Flight Orchestra grew into an octet that, between 2012 and 2025, has put out seven studio albums — the latest being Give Us The Moon (Rockline review), released on January 31, 2025 (their first album under the Napalm Records banner). The thing about The Night Flight Orchestra is that their songs always sound like something that was played, recorded, and released in the seventies and eighties — but you never get the sense they’ve lifted anything from anyone. It’s purely creation fuelled by deep inspiration from that era. One moment you’re hearing Toto, the next Survivor, then Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Alan Parsons Project — then it shifts toward Styx, Angel, late-era Rainbow, Bad Co., Kiss, even The Beatles, ABBA. In short: everything sounds deeply familiar, yet you can never quite pin down exactly where it belongs. To hell with analysis — what matters here is the magic of the music, whose whole mission is to whisk you away somewhere undefined, stir up your most genuine emotions, and deliver the best possible party.
The band has already sold out several shows mid-tour, especially in Germany. The date immediately after Vienna — Munich — was completely sold out. For two party-hungry residents of St. Florian’s parish in the Notranjska region, Vienna once again proved very convenient, especially given that it was Valentine’s Day and a Friday — even though for a good while beforehand every media outlet had been dutifully terrorizing us with warnings of a complete snowpocalypse, which turned out to be nothing more than a poorly-timed weather fart compared to the snowstorms of the eighties, which had far less (or zero) media hype yet we survived those just fine too. The sun was already out by the time we were approaching Graz. The doors of Vienna’s Szene club opened at exactly 7:30 PM. Punctual to the second. In poured the most eager early arrivals, who quickly formed a queue for the cloakroom. The real entertainment, though, was the merch booth, where a stewardess-clad, extremely chatty vendor had to roll her sleeves up right from the start.
Right on the stroke of eight, Sweden’s Metalite took the stage. The quintet — Erica Ohlsson (vocals),
Edwin Premberg (guitar), Robert Örnesved (guitar), Robert Majd (bass guitar), and new drummer Erik Junttila Johansson, who joined the band in November 2024 — delivered a tight masterclass in professionalism in just under three quarters of an hour. If the stage had been any bigger, you’d have barely been able to keep up with their energy. Of course all eyes were on the slender Erica Ohlsson, who commanded the modest crowd of around 200 people with effortless ease — and not just with her excellent vocals, but with breathtaking stage authority. Both guitarists, and especially the fiery bassist Robert Majd, worked every inch of that stage, testament to the huge mileage of shows the band already has behind them. Armed with four studio albums, the band devoted most of their attention to their latest release, last year’s Expedition One, from which they fired off the bulk of the set. And they delivered on every front. Power metal with zero room for hesitation. A brilliant performance — seductive, scorching — and the sound (for a support slot) was very, very good.
But of course, everyone was there for The Night Flight Orchestra. The moment Metalite left the stage, the crowd surged forward from the back to grab the best spots. There weren’t many people — Szene officially holds just under 500, but there were fewer than 300 in the room. That didn’t stop the octet — made up entirely of top-tier musicians — from delivering the best possible show. The Night Flight Orchestra had already started knocking on the door of a niche that had become seriously overlooked over the past two decades right from their debut Infernal Affairs, and they pulled off a masterstroke there. Knowing full well they’re not reinventing the wheel, they’ve wrapped the whole thing in a genuine stage ceremony themed around the adventures of flight crews on endless transatlantic journeys — and trips to the moon. Over the years they’ve only refined it further, and the production has grown year on year. With Give Us The Moon they’ve opened yet another chapter. The two stewardess-clad backing vocalists have, alongside captain Björn Strid, become indispensable icons of the band over time. This time too they had pleasant company at their side: a bottle of chilled champagne, which they diligently poured into their glasses throughout the show — all in perfect tune with the stage ceremony, all in service of delivering the best possible entertainment.
There are precious few men in this world who wear gleaming silk capes and carry the mission of saving humanity! Batman, Superman, cape crusader Rick Wakeman (Yes) — and of course, the world would be a poorer place without Björn ‘Speed’ Strid among them! Sporting the requisite Eye of a Tiger-style beret in the tradition of Dave Bickler (Survivor) from the eighties, a glam outfit — a silky jacket covered in medals, insignia, and swaying tassels — plus the mandatory white dancing shoes, this man is unquestionably the band’s number-one icon. And what a voice he has when he’s not growling for Soilwork! When you hear it, you know it would be a crying shame not to put that voice to work in at least one other band, in a very different genre. Ray-Ban aviators — the Top Gun model — were on every male in the band this time around, with the sole exception of the exceptional bassist Sharlee D’Angelo!
Bottom line: as expected, the octet focused heavily on the excellent latest studio effort Give Us The Moon, which was represented by five songs in the set (all three singles: Shooting Velvet, Paloma, and the mandatory encore inclusion Way To Spend The Night). The show ran for an hour and three quarters, and with the sole exception of their second studio album Skyline Whispers (2015), The Night Flight Orchestra touched on every one of their studio albums. The excellent White Jeans (Aeromantic II, 2021), driven by a disco beat, was played even faster in the encore than on the studio version!
That’s what it comes down to. You’d struggle to find a better dose of fun. Even the newest guitarist, Rasmus Ehrnborn — who had to step into the late David Andersson’s shoes in 2022 — justified his place in every way. A few slip-ups crept in; the most noticeable was a miscommunication during the performance of the brilliant arena/progressive/bluesy rock mini-epic suite Transatlantic Moon from the debut, where he and Strid exchanged a few looks before Rasmus marched over to the guitar tech, the whole thing giving the impression the guitar wasn’t tuned to the right pitch — but Rasmus quickly found the chords in a new position and played the solo in the second half of the song exactly as it should be. That track really is one of the highlights, especially for the more discerning listener. This is music that could have been written in the second half of the seventies. To be precise: The Night Flight Orchestra is a band that since 2012 has been releasing the best possible pop rock music that wasn’t actually written in the seventies and eighties. Had they appeared back then, they’d have gone multi-platinum with millions of records sold. And that’s exactly the niche: reigniting interest in music that’s archaic, forgotten, and remembered only by a generation that’s now well past fifty. And they’ve done exactly that — The Night Flight Orchestra have activated precisely that generation with their music. There were plenty of older couples who had come to soak in the rhythms and sounds from the soundtrack of their teenage years!
Björn is, alongside both singers, the main focal point. An incredibly entertaining vocalist, a seasoned frontman who has seen it all — massive festival crowds, the cramped stuffiness of club gigs from Soilwork’s early days, much like the Vienna show itself, with only a few dozen people. He wasn’t even thrown off by the noticeably alcohol-impaired young man who kept chiming in with unnecessary commentary during Strid’s between-song addresses to the crowd. Björn kept his professional cool in those moments and if anything only stoked the guy further with his comebacks. He was probably also calmed in those — for musicians, definitely disruptive — concert moments by the sight of the TNFO shirt the young man had just bought there at the Vienna gig. Björn’s performance, packed with dance moves lifted straight from the disco floors of the early eighties, suits the band’s show perfectly. In the encore, Rasmus even fanned him down with a towel during one of the breaks, just as he’d cooled down keyboardist John Lönnmyr during one of the opening numbers on the electric piano. In the grand finale, Björn called on the Nightflyers to form a train. The closing number followed — West Ruth Ave, taken from the debut. Both sharp ladies — stage stewardesses Anna Brygård and Asa Lundman — were also in on the fun, firing up the whole thing with their own little conga.
The band’s sense of bombast and pomp is exceptional. The setlist could easily have been built around plenty of other songs from their vast arsenal — tracks brimming with ultra-infectious, impossibly catchy musicality. The number of candidates the band has recorded across their albums is nothing short of enviable. In that regard, figuring out what to squeeze into the hour and three quarters you have available is genuinely tough. When you listen through all the band’s albums — where you genuinely cannot find a single misstep — you understand just how impossibly hard the task of choosing a setlist is for The Night Flight Orchestra, every single time.
The concert of would-be seventies and eighties hits flew by. And it thrilled on every front. Everything is meticulously worked out. The dedication and precision that Scandinavian perfectionism brings remain unblemished! Above all when it comes to the core mission, which the band carried out with flying colours: getting the crowd fired up to the highest pitch of hot, engaged enthusiasm — making them joyful, wild, exuberant, and free. That’s it! Fun. Beyond all limits.
We’ll definitely be coming back to The Night Flight Orchestra shows. For as long as the band keeps moving and putting out albums with the kind of beautiful musical content documented across their seven studio albums to date! The first opportunity is already in August 2025, when The Night Flight Orchestra play Rock Castle festival in Moravia, Czech Republic!
Authors: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
Metalite – setlist:
1. Intro
2. Disciples of the Stars
3. Far from the Sanctuary
4. Beyond the Horizon
5. Cyberdome
6. New Generation / Apocalypse
7. Blazing Skies
8. Black Horse Rider / Nightmare / Afterlife
9. Peacekeepers
10. We Bring You the Stars
The Night Flight Orchestra – setlist:
1. Final Call (Intro)
2. Stratus
3. California Morning
4. Shooting Velvet
5. Divinyls
6. Domino
7. Gemini
8. Cosmic Tide
9. This Boy’s Last Summer
10. Paloma
11. Satellite
12. Transmissions
13. Can’t Be That Bad
14. Transatlantic Blues
15. Burn for Me
—encore—
16. White Jeans
17. Way to Spend the Night
18. West Ruth Ave
