DESOLATION ROSE

Even though their epics are the most interesting part of their music, the Flower Kings have always enjoyed composing and playing songs, I mean pieces with the simple structure of a song. All their records are a perfect combination between monumental epics, long pieces and simple songs. "Desolation rose" is mostly constituted by this latter kind.

Of course, "Tower one" have the length and the rich variations of an epic and it's really a very solid one. Maybe after a few more listening I shall feel it's one of the strongest they ever did. But the rest of this production consists of songs and quite a pretty collection of songs, most of them flowing in a very melodic way. In spite of its 8,30 minutes, even "The resurrected Judas" has the structure of a song completed by some splendid and energic guitar flights sustained by clear key waves.

Thanks to this song orientation, here we certainly have the most melodic record this prolific group has edited. But because of this song orientation too, this record is lacking the balance of the preceding works of the group. Melodies are beautiful, voices are perfect as always, the musicianship is as impressive as ever. But if we all love (I guess) the ability of the Flower Kings to elaborate melodies, we also all love them for their capacity to express their extraordinary musical inventiveness in large, wide works. And one is? not enough !

At last, in my opinion, this production is really impoverished by the bonus record. All of this pieces, mainly short, would have been nice parts or bridges in a song but don't have a real meaning alone.

For such a record, I would give 4 stars to any other group. But the Flower Kings only deserve between 3 and 3,5 stars !