Album Title: The Flower King
Artist: Roine Stolt
Nationality: Swedish
Year: 1994
Subgenre: Bats me. prog rock lite?
Player(s): Roine Stolt (Lead Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Keyboards, Percussion), Hasse Froberg (Vocals only on tracks 1 & 8), Hasse Brunisson/Jaime Salazar (Drums), Dexter Frank Jr (Keyboards, “electronics”), Don Azarro (Bass, Moog Taurus), Ulf Wallander (Sax)
Familiarity: Zilch. Never heard of them.
Favourite track(s): “Magic circus of Zeb”
Why? Well, I liked the camel or whatever that was at the end. And there was some pretty ripping guitar although it sounded like a rip off of Steve Vai only not as melodic. Kind of a wah wah hell.
Least favourite track(s): Close your eyes.
Why? The Nylon string guitar, the whispery vocals, the bad David Gilmour imitations. I don't know. Just painful to get through.
Any preconceptions prior to listening, whether good or bad? Well, considering I have been so pleasantly surprised with other albums here I did have high hopes. And hearing he was a great guitar player got me a bit excited.
Factoids you'd like to share? Nothing comes to mind
End impression: This is the kind of prog I was afraid would be dominating the list. Everything that made me think I did not like the genre. If I had heard the Watch followed by this I may have given up. Thank god for Gentle Giant, Van Der Graaf, Spocks beard...
Comments: Ok, clearly I did not care for it. I was not a big fan of the vocals. The guitar sounded so way over processed. I think what I disliked mostly was the complete AOR soft rock sound of it. The bad flute in Humanizzimo that went on way too long. Sounded like Kenny G jumped in on sax at one point. "The sound of violence" didn't sound anything like the sound of violence. Then there was the "we believe in light and love, every precious thing" stuff which I wouldn't mind if it was not surrounded by such wussy music. Guitar was a little too much like Steve Vai tone wise but without the "Flair" and phrasing. I don't want to be overly mean. Roin is clearly a very good guitar player and musician. I liked some of the attempted artistic touches. Like the weird opening day baseball announcing at the beginning of Pilgrims Inn. There was a nice build up in that song. But overall I never want to hear this again and I will be gun shy for future flower kings although will keep an open mind.
Rating: 2.5