The Night Flight Orchestra released their fifth album Aeromantic in 2020. They have an interesting background, releasing their first album in 2012 as a side-project to their main bands. Since then, the NFO have become a well-established band in their own right.
Musically, they are known for embracing nostalgic 1980s melodic metal in their sound. Or, perhaps better said, that is actually their sound. What started out as a walk down memory lane with a few songs written in the style of the music they grew up with as teens, have now eclipsed their main projects.
They got better with each album. Their previous album Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough (2018) is their magnum opus. It totally fulfilled their potential as far as mixing a retro 1980s melodic rock sound with dashes of metal and pop from that time, being consistently good from start to finish. Creating catchy moments steeped in that vintage feel is their mission statement, and on STWAE their songwriting and ambitions meshed well on an overall high level.
Then things got confusing. In June 2019, the band released the new song Satellite digitally, on streaming services, and as a video on YouTube. It was a standalone song, not the first single for a new album. Were they testing the waters for new release models? Was it going to be individual songs from now on, or was this a one-off? We could not be sure, but the song itself is very much what you would expect from the band – retro-style melodic rock with a catchy chorus. If anything, it was perhaps a bit same-y.
Things got stranger when they released another new song and video several months later. Cabin Pressure Drops appeared in November 2019, consisting of synth-laden background music over which a woman narrates thoughts about her life for five solid minutes. The video depicts the woman as she gets up early in the morning, gets dressed in her airline hostess uniform, and travels to the airport to go to work. It was quirky and left people confused, the video getting mixed reactions. Several people would complement the background music, which made the band tease the idea of doing an album of instrumental music. As it turned out, this was just another experiment, and this song would neither be part of a new album or signal a new direction.
The next song appeared just a few months later in January 2020. Divinyls was released as the first single from an actually upcoming album, and became the first bona fide taste of what that would be like. Divinyls is also the name of a very successful Australian new wave/pop/rock band with several hits primarily in the 1980s, but the song has nothing to do with them. It sounds very much like we have come to expect from NFO. If anything, it is a rather safe choice with zero new musical ground covered. This is sadly typical for the single choices from this album. As I will get into, the album has many examples of the band trying different things and even stretching a little bit beyond their (somewhat restrictive) formula, which the single choices fail to showcase.
Having heard the first single, all we could do was to wait for the full album Aeromantic, which was released on 28 February 2020.
The first track Servants of the Air is an amazing opener, and one of the best tracks on offer. After the rather safe first single (and the last few standalone efforts), it was actually quite a bit of a relief to hear it.
After a lovely intro featuring soundtrack-worthy synths and a somewhat dramatic main theme, which builds intensity as each instrument joins in, the song kicks off into quite a ferocious rocker. Well, by NFO standards, anyway. The drums drive the song forward (with double bass drums!) in a very solid tempo. There are several quite impressive bass runs here and there. The guitar riffs drive the song onward too, but they are based in melodic riffs and accompanied by huge synths and keyboards. For all its tempo and bravado, the melody remains the focus.
Servants of the Air does not herald a new and heavier direction for the band, but it does show a new side to them, and it kicks some solid patootie. The synth solo is great, and the guitar solo is the most in-your-face the band has ever been. The band members have always shied a bit away from bringing NFO too close to their metal roots, and while they still hold back quite a bit, this song at least brings that side of them closer to the fore than before. It also shows that they can safely dip a bit deeper into this direction as well from time to time without losing the elements that make them uniquely NFO.
The song transitions rather well into Divinyls, which we already mentioned as the first single. It shares a somewhat driving tempo and a lot of intricate parts with the song that went before it on the album, but it is clearly more synth-based and shows that the band will draw from several things. The guitars and keyboards chug nicely alongside each other. The rhythm section provides a steady beat that enables the vocals – including tons of great backing vocals – to sell the melody very nicely.
Speaking of vocals, the band is making consistently good use of singing ladies Anna-Mia Bonde and Anna Brygård throughout the album. The backing vocals have textures and dimensions beyond what we have found on previous albums, which is the biggest musical addition this time around. The ladies have joined the band as full-time backing singers, and they are rock solid. It would honestly have been good to see them get a few moments to shine in the spotlight – imagine NFO embracing a few ABBA moments, for example! – but for now they are primarily used to harmonise or counter-point Björn Strid’s lead vocals. They do a great job with that, and their time to shine further will surely come at a later stage.
Third track If Tonight Is Our Only Chance features a solid keyboard riff as the opening hook, while the verses are bass-and-keyboard heavy, with the drums providing a disco backbeat. The chorus is pure AOR, with (again) a lovely choir of vocals that should come with an earworm warning. It becomes one of the great, lovely pop moments on the album. This Boy’s Last Summer initially almost sounds like new wave, with its synth-based bedding and guitars used primarily as spice. The fact that the track is very up-tempo ultimately brings out more of its rock elements, especially in the chorus where the rock’n’roll guitars become a bigger part of the soundscape than during the rest of the song. Curves is a dead ringer for 1980s bands like Toto and Survivor – in the best possible way – with solid keyboard parts being in the driving seat of the song while the full band provides backing as needed.
Transmissions is next. This was the second single from the album, and like the first single it is a rather safe choice. Stylistically this is the lowest common denominator of NFO music – it sounds like the most typical material from their prior albums. I wish the band would showcase some of the songs where they stretch out a little more – but primarily, they need to pick the more interesting songs on the album, which IMO this isn’t.
The synth runs that open the song and run pretty much run through it are steady and work well for a while, but as it goes on, its repetitiveness starts grinding. The drums provide a steady and (initially cool) beat, but they never change. That sameness (along with other same-y elements) gets to me after a while. These kind of signals are an indication that the song may be too long, which might be a fair point as it clocks in at 5:44. When the singing ends, the song still has two minutes to go, with the same backing tracks running over and over. A violin solo at least adds something to the first end part, after which the backing of a steady drum beat, the ever-repetitive synth loop and ongoing guitar licks keeps playing over and over for a further minute. An edit might have helped, but all the same, this is a surprising and disappointing mid-album lull.
The title track Aeromantic breaks the monotony in grand style, as the intro and verses adds touches of glam rock (!) to NFO’s arsenal. The pre-chorus section breaks into a lovely and über-infectious disco section. The chorus bursts out with swirling AOR singalong filled with keyboards, huge guitars and keyboards, and lovely vocal parts. It sounds grand, and what makes this song such a lovely showcase for the band is capable of is their successful embrace of multiple music styles within the same song. It sounds great and blends together really well.
Golden Swansdown is another single pick from the album… am I steeling myself a little extra? I have been a bit harsh about the other single choices, but this is definitely a better one from the perspective of showcasing something different, even though it is the ballad on the album. I may have preferred to showcase one of the rockier and up-tempo tracks, but I won’t object to this pick. As it happens, Golden Swansdown is a song of undeniable quality.
NFO have always embraced pop moments in the past, and have many lovely and melodic moments, but this time they are going all-in on a ballad in a way they never did before. Determined not to make it soppy, initially it reminds me of a vintage Elton John ballad with Björn singing over a synth backing. The others join in for the next verse, giving the song more of a band feel which happily reminds me of Magnum in their more ballad-y moments, with Björn almost emulating Bob Catley. The chorus brings the song into Asia territory with a full melodic arrangement. The song is a wonderful ballad, complete with an epic and expansive “Slash-standing-on-cliff’s-edge”-worthy guitar solo.
The next song Taurus is the final single pick from the album. This is at least a more punchy number. The bass and drums drive the verses forward, and the track has a definite sense of urgency about it. It is the only track on the album shorter than three minutes, which fits the delivery. It is up-tempo and packs a punch, racing towards the finishing line. Ultimately, the track is decent but forgettable, with less of the hooks that characterise the best NFO moments.
Carmencita Seven features intriguing keyboard parts in the intro, played with an interesting (dare I saw progressive?) time signature. Even more impressively, the band retains that time signature as they embellish the part greatly when they come in. Is it bad to say that an intro is your favourite part of a song? After 45 glorious seconds the verses get underway, and things get back into more straightforward AOR territory. The band dips back into that progressive part as a link between chorus and verse several times later in the song, though. It’s so cool. I never thought I would hear something like that on an NFO song.
The rest of the song is a solid melodic rocker with strong melodies and a solid beat. Björn really sings his socks off in this song, but I’m afraid that intro riff still steals the show for me.
The last minute is a long, experimental outro with some ambient keyboard parts and what reminds me of a distant dulcimer. It does not sound like anything that the NFO has ever done before. I have no problem with it, even though I am unsure how well it fits with the song. I look at it like its own entity – a separate outro, or a standalone intro to the next song – and that works better in my head.
Sister Mercurial has a somewhat huge sound. An expansive guitar theme intrigues in the pre-verse sections. The verses feel sparser, with stabs of synths and guitar provide some ambience. The choruses get the kitchen sink treatment, with everybody piling on with several guitar parts, layers of keyboards, pounding bass and drums, and full multi-layered vocals. The contract to the verses is very noticeable – dramatically so. I am not sure about the arrangement of the song, but the song itself is another solid, melodic slice of NFO AOR.
Dead of Winter is the album closer, and the third track on the album to pass six minutes (just about). That sets the stage for the band to go out with a huge sounding track. A nice and brooding keyboard theme sets up the intro of the song, which almost has a progressive flair as instruments come in with unusual time signatures and a fanfare-y style. For a while I have wild hallucinations of the track being the intro to a fully-fledged 1970s-style conceptual prog piece, but not so. The verses brings it all back to 4/4 melodic rock safety.
The song does however reveal itself as an intense, melodic hard rocker with shades of something darker, something more, on the horizon. Björn delivers a powerful vocal, with the music insistently pounding along, perhaps adding shades of melodic pomp rock in the vein of Styx to their usual melodic rock. The chorus is mighty and with a chilling quality, making it stand out from the usual melodic singalong feel of most of them.
Unlike some previous songs, this one never lets up. Björn lets off a mighty scream just before the four-and-a-half-minute mark, after which we get an intense progressive keyboard solo with pounding drums and some intensity before it is all brought back home. The song has a huge sound and is a very epic end to the album. With that, the album actually ends up being bookended by its two best songs.
And that’s Aeromantic! It is a very good effort that should please existing fans of the band as well as anyone with a fondness for the period that the music picks inspiration from. So far it has not topped the previous album Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough (2018) for me overall, primarily due to less consistent quality. While the best tracks are great, they don’t quite reach the peaks of the previous album. A few tracks are also average-to-lesser moments that drag the overall impression down.
Aeromantic does however manage to be a more interesting album musically with the band stretching and pushing the envelope to a larger degree than on previous efforts, especially with a few songs pushing towards heavier territory than before. Glam moments and even a few progressive touches here and there were also great positive surprises. That, along with their increased and effective focus on vocal harmonies, is the album’s biggest asset. That actually makes me really hopeful for the future. That adventurousness combined with more vocal possibilities, possibly even some female lead parts, could be really great.
Like so many others, the band has sadly been unable to tour behind the album due to the Covid-19 restrictions, but they have performed via live streams and engaged with fans online in that way.
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