We consider collective excitations of a Fermi liquid. For each value of the angular momentum $l$, we study the evolution of longitudinal and transverse collective modes in the charge (c) and spin (s) channels with the Landau parameter $F_l^{c(s)}$, starting from positive $F_l^{c(s)}$ and all the way to the Pomeranchuk transition at $F_l^{c(s)} = -1$. In each case, we identify a critical zero-sound mode, whose velocity vanishes at the Pomeranchuk instability. For $F_l^{c(s)} < -1$, this mode is located in the upper frequency half-plane, which signals an instability of the ground state. In a clean Fermi liquid the critical mode may be either purely relaxational or almost propagating, depending on the parity of $l$ and on whether the response function is longitudinal or transverse. These differences lead to qualitatively different types of time evolution of the order parameter following an initial perturbation. A special situation occurs for the $l = 1$ order parameter that coincides with the spin or charge current. In this case the residue of the critical mode vanishes at the Pomeranchuk transition. However, the critical mode can be identified at any distance from the transition, and is still located in the upper frequency half-plane for $F_1^{c(s)} < -1$. The only peculiarity of the charge/spin current order parameter is that its time evolution occurs on longer scales than for other order parameters. We also analyze collective modes away from the critical point, and find that the modes evolve with $F_l^{c(s)}$ on a multi-sheet Riemann surface. For certain intervals of $F_l^{c(s)}$, the modes either move to an unphysical Riemann sheet or stay on the physical sheet but away from the real frequency axis. In that case, the modes do not give rise to peaks in the imaginary parts of the corresponding susceptiblities.
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