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Regarding The Flower Kings:
THE FLOWER KINGS: The future of Sweden's prime retro-prog band seems a bit unclear as news has reached us that leadsinger Hasse Fröberg will be leaving the band after the recording of the new album. The band is currently holed up in the studio writing and recording the follow-up to last year's Paradox Hotel.
When we wrote to the Flower Kings frontman Roine Stolt for a studio update we received the very gloomy news as a response:
"This will probably be the last Flower Kings album we record, as Hasse has announced he will be leaving the band. He has taken up a job as a teacher at a school in the city of Nagrota Bagwan in the Kangra district in northern India. It's been a life-long dream of his to teach in third-world countries, and he and his wife Monica and their two children will be leaving for a minimum of three years.
We are all sad to see him go, though we can understand and respect his decision. It has always been difficult with Hasse not being a full-time professional musician, but this of course adds impossible logistics... We have had several bandmembers coming and leaving through the years, but Hasse's voice is such an integral part of The Flower Kings, that I can't see us releasing an album without him. The new album will be the last album under the name of The Flower Kings... After that I will continue releasing albums under my own name, or perhaps Jonas, Thomas and I will start a new band at a later point in the future. We will just have to see how this goes..."
On the Flower Kings forum speculation has started whether The Flower Kings will do a 'Genesis' and promote drummer Marcus Liliequist as the new leadsinger. Marcus has been known to have a very similar vocal range as Fröberg, so it seems a logical solution.
Regarding Dream Theater:
DREAM THEATER: The new Dream Theater album Systematic Chaos has been postponed...
ROADRUNNER RECORDS regret to announce the delay of the new Dream Theater album Systematic Chaos. The album, scheduled for release on June 4th has been postponed due to errors in artwork printing. A&R man Derek Oliver commented: "We regret the postponement of the Dream Theater release due to printing errors in the artwork. The booklets received from the printing factory contained errors that did not pass our high standard quality check, so we had no other choice than to reject the artwork and get it reprinted."
The release date will now be July 23rd.
Systematic Chaos if the first album for the band to be released on Roadrunner records and is the band's ninth album, following the critically acclaimed Octavarium. The album was recorded at Avatar Studios in New York, with veteran engineer/ mixer Paul Northfield (Rush, Queensryche, Porcupine Tree). As usual, Portnoy and Petrucci chose to co-produce the project, which features seven compositions (one a 25-minute epic).
DREAM THEATER - SYSTEMATIC CHAOS
In The Presence of Enemies Pt.1
Forsaken
Constant Motion
The Dark Eternal Night
Repentance
Prophets of War
The Ministry of Lost Souls
In The Presence of Enemies Pt.2
Produced by John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy
Engineered and Mixed by Paul Northfield
Drummer Mike Portnoy was slightly less diplomatic about the error:
"Apparently they misspelled my name. It must have been a sick joke from someone at the printer's because when we received the test print everything was ok, but the final artwork showed my name as "Porntoy" and this was only discovered after 70,000 had been printed.
I personally thought it was very funny. After all the album is called 'Systematic Chaos'!
The product manager of Roadrunner was less amused tho. He said it was unacceptable and that some stores would refuse to stock it like this, so the artwork is to be reprinted.
That's politics. We will just have to budge and accept it. I am sorry for the delay but will ensure you the album will be worth the wait!"
MP
There are a couple of stories that seem a bit ripe as well. These were the two that I hope are a hoax, however.
E
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