THE SUM OF NO EVIL

For my money the best FLOWER KINGS' album to date and boy do you ever get a lot of music for your money, but this is not always a good thing. You see the FLOWER KINGS have a problem I seem to see a lot with modern prog bands: the need to make epics when epics are not called for. They, along with many others, get caught stretching a great song out so long that it can leave you saying I got the point of this song 10 minutes ago, why won't you let me hear more of your work yet. I love the prog epic, a great epic song grabs your attention and keeps you for the long haul, and this is a hard enough to do task when you your not releasing album after album filled with 10+ minute tracks. It seems to me that the only thing holding the FLOWER KINGS back from having album after album of prog classics is their inability to know when to stop a song. So many highly effective concepts allowed to wander off for 7 or more minutes longer than they should, its frustrating. All that being said this is the bands finest work to date and there aren't too many moments here where the songs feel stretched too thin, Love Is The Answer's 25 minutes is a bit excessive but it doesn't depreciate its value in any great way. As I have a tendency toward list making and ranking albums I find it hard to give an album that would fall outside my top 200 prog albums a full 4 stars. I hover between the rating definitions Excellent addition to any prog music collection and Good, but non-essential because I believe it to be both an excellent addition but not important enough to be considered essential. 3.44 out of 5.