Björn “Speed” Strid Explains How The Night Flight Orchestra is No Longer a Side Project, Comments on “Scary” Covid-19 Rates in Florida and Texas

Soilwork and The Night Flight Orchestra frontman Björn “Speed” Strid was our guest on a recent episode of The MetalSucks Podcast to discuss the brand new NFO album, Aeromantic II, his view on how Sweden handled the pandemic with only restrictions and no lockdowns, and a number of other topics.

Speaking on how The Night Flight Orchestra started as a side project but has since become so much more, Björn explained:

“Absolutely, it’s been [more than a side project] for quite some time. It stopped being just a project after maybe, the first or second record. [laughs] I don’t know, hard to say.

“But we knew we had something special right away, and then it comes to a point where you want to share it with the world because you feel like this is something really special and everyone needs to hear this! So we started feeling very confident. But I don’t know if we realized it was going to become such a big force, and something that really is sticking out in today’s music scene ’cause it really is.

“And we feel sometimes, quite lonely, [laughs] in this little genre that we’re doing. Of course there’s other bands that have an ’80’s feel, it’s quite trendy right now. You hear it everywhere, but [what we do is] this sort of cinematic rock and I feel that there’s only a few bands that are doing what we’re doing. We also feel like… why is nobody else doing this? We’re fine being quite lonely in that little genre of ours because we sort of hijacked an era and made it into our own and I think we have a lot of trademarks.

“We definitely created our own sound as well and you can recognize us in our compositions and how we play and how we produce the records and how Sebastian [Forslundis, percussion] is mixing them. He created a sound within itself.

“We knew we had something special but I don’t think we realized it would have gotten this big. Pretty quickly we got Grammy nominated in Sweden which we would never gotten with Soilwork. There’s been many times where I was like, ‘Why’s Soilwork not getting any recognition?’ At least when it comes to stuff like that, Grammys, there were a lot of fellow bands from Sweden in the same genre that were nominated many times but it felt like it seems impossible for Soilwork. When we started Night Flight it was just like, BOOM. It was quite interesting.”

Speaking on the prospect of touring the states right now, Strid revealed he still views it as a scary proposition due to the continued prevalence of Covid-19, citing The Night Flight Orchestra guitarist David Anderrson, who is a doctor:

“It’s kinda scary with some of the states, Dr. Dave [Anderrson] told me today, what is it, Florida and Texas? Where everything is just open and there’s people in the hospitals doing really bad also who are fully vaccinated, I heard? [Over 90% of those in hospitals in the U.S. right now are unvaccinated. -Ed.] But I don’t know. But there’s like no lockdown whatsoever so it’s quite scary. We have the delta versions and all that stuff and omega and this and that. [laughs]

“But it could happen here [Sweden] as well. I don’t think it’s that much different depending on where you’re going. But we haven’t done a full North American tour in a long time. It’s actually in the plans, but if it’s going to happen… I don’t know. You want to put your health first, you don’t want to gamble, but I don’t know, is America going to be that much worse than it’s gonna be here in one or two years? I don’t know. But it’s scary how Florida is handling things and Texas as well, I gotta say.

You can listen to our full chat with Björn right here or in the embed below, along with a new banger from The Night Flight Orchestra.