UNFOLD THE FUTURE

"Unfold the future" one of the most conflicting albums I know. On the one hand it features awesome epics and instrumental tunes wich are really interesting but on the other hand this album features boring filler material wich is really unnecessary. I really like the Flower Kings but I'm awere of the problem with filler material. Roine Stolt tends to release brim-full double albums wich seems to be a good thing at first sight. But it's not! Many songs are really poor and boring... But the guys from sweden also manage it to compose truly awesome longtracks and instruementals.

"Unfold the future" has a strong jazzy approach. It sounds different from other releases because the saxophone really has a lot to do on this one. Also the general sound shows that jazz is a part of this album. I think that it's something that really becomes the Flower Kings. Something I really like about the Flower Kings are the instrumental parts wich are better than ever. I think that Jonas Reingold is one of the best bass players out there. Just listen to this album and you will know what I mean. His playing is not a simple rythm thing, it's an enrichment for the sound. His sound is unique, I know no other bass player I could identify as fast as Jonas. Zoltan Csörsz is one of the most talented drummers I know. He still is very young but is already well known in the scene. But the rest of the band also playes at a very high level. The first disc features the 30 minute epic "The truth will set you free" wich is one of the best Flower Kings songs so far, it's also a must for every show. The Flower Kings really have some great epics but this one is even better. The instrumental parts are really terrific. "Silent Inferno" is the second epic on this album. Again, a beautiful song, I love the middle section with the great bass solo. This song is also one of the best Flower Kings songs. The rest of the disc. Well, I don't like most of it, boring and not interesting. "Christianopel" is a jazzy instrumental, very interesting but the rest is what I call filler material. I don't like this kind of songs but Roine Stolt always has some of them on the albums. They don't bother me and I can listen to them but I think the difference between other Flower kings songs is so big, it's a wide gap between these songs and "The truth will set you free". The second site features my all time Flower Kings favorite "Devil's Playground". Again 26 minutes of outstanding music. The instrumental parts are longer in here and some of them, especially the saxophone dominated one, are quite queer and odd, very cool and interesting. Here the jazzy approach seems to reach it's climax. "Genie in a bottle" and "Devil's danceschool" are worth to be mentioned, the rest again is the stuff I don't like. I have the limited edition wich features a 10 minute instrumental called "Too late for tomatoes". I really like it and think it would have been a great track for the album. It's one of the best FK songs BTW.

So what should be the rating for this album? I think a single disc with "The truth will set you free", "Silent Inferno", "Devil's Playground" and the bonus track "Too late for tomatoes" on it would be a monster of an album, 5 Stars and nothing less. But there are these boting and uninteresting schmaltzy songs...Due to the possibility of skipping songs I substract one star so that 4 stars remain. I think that "Unfold the future" is, apart from the boring songs, their best album so far. The constellation I mentioned would maybe be one of the best albums I know in general. So if you want to board the Flower Kings try this album but I say it again and again, beware of the boring songs and stick to the awesome, mostly epic, ones I mentioned.