BEHIND THE WALLS

Good lord! That was really a surprise! And not a good one, really. Think of any 80´s worst cliches and it´s more than likely you´ll find it here. Small wonder this album is so obscure and not even mentioned on The Flower Kings official site! It´s an embarrassment for mr. Stolt. It seems that in the mid 80´s someone thought it would be a good idea to turn the ex Kaipa guitarist into a pop star. But it never worked out and I guess everyone involved would much rather forget this CD. So if you already know the guy as one of the single most important prog artists of today, or as the extraordinaire musician/songwriter he surely is, be warned: there is NOTHING prog - or even close to anything prog - here.

What we have here is a bunch of pop/new wave tunes with a very reasonable production for the time. While the music itself is not particularly bad per se ( if you like 80´s pop, of course, like a mix of Hall & Oates and Dire Straits, sometimes he seems to be emulating Mark Knopfler´s vocals), it´s so embarrassing to hear Stolt singing those cheesy love lyrics while backed by equally awful plastic sounding synths, electronic drums, pseudo soul saxophones and the like. Even the guitar playing is unrecognizable, although he still manages to produce a few decent solos like he does on the title track and, specially, on the album´s closer Into The light (the only real high point in the entire album, but only because of the very good guitar part).

Conclusion: more a curio than anything else. And even then, only for the completionists and collectors. Even hardcore fans will probably be very disappointed with this disastrous experiment. I never thought I´d give such low rate for a Roine Stolt related album, but I guess everyone is entitled to make a few mistakes in life. And for a prog site like PA 1.5 stars is the most I can rate it. I´m glad I didn´t have to spend my hard earned money to listen to it (I borrowed from a friend). Avoid it.