The seventeenth album from Roine Stolt’s prolific and wonderful The Flower Kings, the simply titled Love is a twelve-track epic that neatly expands on the band’s myriad influences, once again marking The Flower Kings out as one of the finest exponents of classical prog currently treading the boards. For this album, Roine is joined by his long-term musical partner Hasse Froberg, as well as Michael Stolt, Mirko DeMaio, and newest member Lalle Larsson (keyboards) – who stepped in following Zach Kamins’ departure. Engineered by Lars Hallback (of Swedish jazz-rockers Crossfade) and mixed by Roine himself, it’s a great sounding album, dressed up in typically evocative artwork courtesy of Catrin Welz-Stein, and packed with surprisingly catchy tunes.
The opening track, We Claim The Moon, finds the band in the mood to rock, with elements of Deep Purple and Yes embedded in its DNA. From the massive, Jon Lord-inspired keys to the surprisingly gritty riffs that pepper the song, it’s an electrifying opening, and it’s easy to imagine the band, all smiles, as they laid this down in the studio.
Having set the tone, the band unleash The Elder, which clocks in at some eleven-minutes. It emerges from the gentlest of beginnings, a simple, music-box melody paving the way for a song that bobs and weaves across its runtime. With massed vocal harmonies the order of the day, the song captures the essence of The Flower Kings – drawing the listener into a world filled with light and life, and soundtracked by musicians whose deft feel for their instruments is never less than awe inspiring. Taking in everything from heady prog to dark jazz, it’s a truly monumental piece of music.
It’s followed by a shorter song titled How Can you Leave Us Now!? A subtle, Floyd-flavoured piece driven by some truly gorgeous fretless bass work, there’s a poignancy to the track given greater weight by Roine’s impassioned vocal delivery.
The album then takes a whimsical turn into the realm of early Genesis on World Spinning, an instrumental that segues directly into Burning Both Edges – a darker piece that slowly hauls itself from a dense bank of eerie synths. It remains fluid across its runtime, exploring a range of influences, from No Man and Roger Waters on the verse to the harder edged, Gilmour-esque guitars that appear in the track’s latter stages.
Four shorter songs follow. First, the dynamic pulse of The Rubble provides the album with a memorable highlight, not to mention some glorious, sweeping lead guitar work. A taut number, it has an edge to it that sticks with the listener. It’s followed by an ever-shifting instrumental titled Kaiser Razor. This, in turn, slips into The Phoenix, a mellifluous, delicately picked offering, with a lovely, Nick Drake feel to it. Ending this short run of brisk pieces is The Promise, a lilting, folky song with elements of King Crimson (circa Starless And Bible Black) flitting through the mix.
With the album into its final third, we get three, longer pieces. The first of these, Love Is, finds The Flower Kings layering vocal upon vocal as they continue to dip into the folk influences found on the preceding song. With elements of early Genesis once more to the fore, it’s a multifaceted track that delights in surprising the listener with its sonic twists.
The pace slows on the glacial Walls Of Shame, which opens with a gentle piano prelude before the band expand the sonic palette to take in the gently meandering prog of David Gilmour’s solo work, with just a touch of Crimson for good measure. This elegant album then concludes with the ten-minute Considerations. Driven by Mirko’s tight, dynamic work behind the kit, and with a compelling mix of chunky synths and soaring leads, it has all ingredients of a genuine progressive rock epic, and it brings Love to an ecstatic end.
The Flower Kings revel in the pomp and majesty of 70’s progressive rock. Their music is a wide-eyed tribute to that era, with the band members largely recreating the sound and feel of those classic acts, from the huge, quasi-symphonic chords of the Mellotron to the gently overdriven guitars that pepper the tracks. As the name of the album implies, a huge amount of love went into the making of the album, and there’s a real sense of joy in the band’s epic outpourings. Defiantly old school, The Flower Kings never fail to bring a little light to the darkest moments, and Love is another fantastic example of the band’s enduring passion for the form. 8.5/10
