Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: 28.02.2020
Production:
Length: 54.48 min
Genre: AOR / Arena Rock
Rating: 9.0 / 10
The Swedes are unbelievable when they set about replicating things. Hard for anyone to come close. Perfectionists without equal. Only the Japanese can challenge them on that front. Then again, Sweden once had ABBA too. We shouldn’t overlook that, because when it comes to The Night Flight Orchestra, ABBA are just as much to blame as the AOR and pop phenomenon that made the tops of the eighties charts shake and buckle, and filled the radio airwaves to bursting.
The Night Flight Orchestra, active since 2007, have just dropped their new studio album “Aeromantic”, their fifth overall and third in a row for Nuclear Blast Records. You’d be hard pressed to call them parodic. Maybe only in so far as the name recalls Electric Light Orchestra, and everything with them has to fly through the air, just like that ELO satellite, which makes for a kind of musical bond with the radio-friendly rock made way back when. But there’s something there. A thing that isn’t immediately obvious, or particularly essential, but still. “Aeromantic” carries a lightly conceptual storyline about a romance unfolding during a flight between two passengers (in this concept, at least for now, of different genders, which is admittedly less and less fashionable).
It’s funny that this is their fifth album in eight years and their third in three. Funny because they still handle the craft of endlessly igniting recycling of proven musical packaging so deftly. When it comes to that, The Night Flight Orchestra are true masters. Sure, they’re devoted to chasing instantly igniting bombast and pomp, floating on the rustling afterglow of synthesizer curtains in that eighties sound aesthetic and the careful harmonizing of lead melodies. But thanks to a modern production, the very same Night Flight Orchestra also have, first, a considerably higher level of technical chops than most of the bands they take inspiration from (Toto being a big exception) and second, a “metal background, or rather intelligence” that the bands they look up to certainly never had. Those two factors are the important weights on the scale that breathe, despite the clichés, a charisma of difference and recognizability into The Night Flight Orchestra, which once again negates the idea that originality alone is the foundation of good music. Strid is a good vocalist. Maybe at times a touch “too rough”, which probably stems from the nature of his growling in Soilwork, but he’s constantly contrasted superbly in the harmonies by singers Anna-Mia Bonde and Anna Brygård. And if I may provoke a little further: if you were looking for even the slightest approximation of an eighties AOR vocal in Bjorn, you could occasionally say that of the late Jimi Jamison (Survivor).
While Curves sounds like a tribute to early Toto and If Tonight Is Our Only Chance venomously draws inspiration from ABBA, the opener Servants of The Air is, right from the start, a gorgeous example of what I described in the previous paragraph. A neat combination of the kitschy packaging of AOR clichés and eighties pop aesthetics, crossed with metal intelligence and the high technical skill of the band’s members, which means the NFO recipe ignites fully and fast. It takes off right away with jet-powered enthusiasm. Servants Of the Air is also the sharpest-edged track on the album and, with its measured production, shows some metal teeth too (guitar phrasing, double-kick thunder). At the same time, the chorus instantly morphs into one of the most harmonic and catchy on the album. A superb combination, then, one you could say hits its own kind of standard of expression in an art-rock blend of new-era AOR aesthetics.
You simply have to congratulate The Night Flight Orchestra on how brilliantly they’ve internalized the sense of translating and perceiving eighties radio rock, and how cunningly they reach a high level of refined tightness, with incredibly skillful tricks for evolving AOR bombast through the fine mechanics of reheating the clichés of a well-chewed formula that, repackaged in new wrapping, ignites so effectively again and again.
“Aeromantic” keeps up the quality level of its excellent predecessor “Sometimes World’s Not Enough” (2018). It works exceptionally competently across the board, is coherent in quality, and is extremely polished in both songwriting and production. Contenders for the role of Eurovision favorite are practically brawling with each other on this album too. Divinyls, Transmissions, or the title track, an interesting crossbreed between ELO and Foreigner. Taurus pulls the same tricks as NFO’s countrymen Houston or Work Of Art. The album’s pile-up of radio hits (from the golden age of AOR) is once again seriously huge, just like the outrageous bombastic hunger The Night Flight Orchestra keep cultivating, “Aeromantic” included. No wonder both previous NFO albums were nominated for the Swedish “Grammy” in the rock/metal album of the year category. “Aeromantic” once again has all the makings. And they say third time’s the charm. The band’s fans already have this album in their hands.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Servants Of The Air
2. Divinyls
3. If Tonight Is Our Only Chance
4. This Boy’s Last Summer
5. Curves
6. Transmissions
7. Aeromantic
8. Golden Swansdown
9. Taurus
10. Carmencita Seven
11. Sister Mercurial
12. Dead Of Winter
Lineup:
Björn Strid – vocals
David Andersson – guitar
Sharlee D’Angelo – bass
Richard Larsson – keyboards
Sebastian Forslund – guitar, percussion, FX
Jonas Källsbäck – drums
Anna-Mia Bonde- backing vocals
Anna Brygård – backing vocals
