UNFOLD THE FUTURE

It's late and according to my forecoming schedule I should sleep but first this review has to be written. The Flower King's seventh studio record is not a record to throw away when you write the history of progressive rock. It could be a masterpiece that will become immortal. When 2001's "The Rainmaker" is some ways was a bit mediocre, 2002's "Unfold the future" almost becomes a perfect brick of tunes in our music house. The cover is wonderful with a mysterious man, maybe an alien with feathers of red. As sometimes this band releases a record with an extraordinary length, this with more than two hours of music and this times it works quite well.

It's Roine Stolt on voice, guitar and keyboards, Hasse Fröberg on vocals, Jonas Reingold on bass, Zoltan Csörsz on drums, Tomas Bodin on piano and keyboards, Hasse Bruniusson on percussion, Ulf Wallander on saxophone and Daniel Gildenlöw on background voices that perform all this music.

When you start listening to this, you begin with a monster track of 31 minutes and here you'll get The Flower Kings, the essence of the band and an explosion of fantastic music. Even if it's so long, the song works so well and every minute is interesting, it's ("The truth will set you free") a true 10/10 song and perhaps one of the band's best. The second best track is an instrumental and quite experimental song with a lot of saxophone splendor: "The devil's danceschool"(10/10) and so we have another epic: "Devil's playground" of 24 minutes that is almost perfect (9/10 or 8/10). The experimental "Christianopel" also deserves a carefull listening (9/10) such as the neat and well played "Man overboard"(9/10). We also have the long and vivid "Silent inferno" with so much music(8/10) and "Black and white", "Grand old world" and "Solitary shell" that is beyond good and in a class for themselves. The other tracks unfortunately could be considered some form of fillers. That's the problem with such a quantitative bunch of songs, some soften in the light of the giants.

Anyway, this record contains awesome music and the best tracks most be heard at least three times each by people that love prog. It could also be in that way that this is "The Flower Kings'" best album, of them all. I know I have given "Paradox Hotel" five stars and I won't change that. Perhaps even this could gain that further on. Right now I am satisfied with claiming this a very fine piece of prog that I recommend warmly; especially: "The truth wills et you free". Four stars!