The Night Flight Orchestra - Midnight Flyer

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Dream Theater, Toto, and a very large handful of other 70s and 80s rock icons formed one enormous, thousand man supergroup? The glorious chaos of hundreds of lead guitarists trying to outriff each other at the same time, more drugs than whichever laundry had to turn out Dave Mustaine’s jeans pockets in the 90s. Imagine the hotel bill for five hundred broken windows and five hundred televisions put through them! While the finer details are best left to the most sordid of imaginations (or my hard rock fanfiction blog), it turns out there’s a much easier way to capture the essence of an era and glitz the living hell out of it, too – just get Björn Strid to do it. 

The brainchild of Strid and guitarist David Andersson’s late night bets on how cool classic rock can be if you put the Ritz on it, The Night Flight Orchestra have been a no-holds-barred hard rock experience since their 2007 birthdate. Unsurprisingly, it has Strids big, gaudy fingerprints all over it, toning down the proggy melodic death metal indulgences of adjacent project Soilwork and swapping them out for indulgences on a more base level. Oh yes, this is liquid pleasure rock and roll, distilled and dropped through a pipette directly into your eyes. And guess what The Night Flight Orchestra have replaced that decidedly untasty liquid in the office eyewash station with?

If you woke up today hoping for a little more pizazz in your life, then Midnight Flyer is the Rock Song of the Week pick for you. It’s garish, poppy, and still what you want your guitar-driven, AOR-ish hard rock to be, all thunder and feedback rolled in particularly sparkly craft materials. Just be careful with the glitter; it’s the rough-edged stuff, and there are rumours someone has been drinking the office eyewash. Burden of proof remains on you, HR department!