The last few years have been hectic for heavy metal legend Bjorn ‘Speed’ Strid. As if a heavy workload with the amazing Soilwork was not enough Strid decided to add to it by forming his ‘fun’ band – Night Flight Orchestra. Now when a musician sets up a side-project band you could be forgiven for thinking it will be a band that just does something every four or five years or so… not Strid and Night Flight Orchestra.
Instead of being a part-time band Night Flight Orchestra has had a heavy touring schedule and is now about to release their brand new album – Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough hot on the heels of their last album, Amber Galactic. Despite all this though Strid says there is certainly still a fun element to the band, especially considering it means a change in what kind of songs they can write. “Well you know it is very liberating, it really is,” he says. “It’s funny because with Soilwork as well I feel very balanced musically, because Soilwork has become gradually darker and more melancholic since we started Night Flight Orchestra so there is a balance and I feel that it is really representing me. And it does that in a very good way because it sums up my personality. So I feel really balanced because I have the best of both worlds, you know? Writing Night Flight Orchestra songs is very liberating and you can have more of a playful approach, you can kind of do what you want, so I needed to have a band like this. You know it runs very deep, and while to some people it might feel like shallow, happy songs, it’s not it runs much deeper than that and there is so many details to it. There are some really complex arrangements and some great song-writing behind them. It is very refreshing to be able to do this, especially with the world the way it is at the moment.”
Strid says though that as the main songwriter for both Night Flight Orchestra and Soilwork he doesn’t feel like he is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at all. “The switch is actually pretty easy,” he explains. “Probably because it is so close to my heart, it just feels like this inner switch really… it kinds of happens automatically so it is pretty easy. It is not all happy, happy music – what we wanted to do with this band was create sort of a soundtrack of being in motion and that is what it feels like for me.”
Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough is out on 29th June through Nuclear Blast.
