UNFOLD THE FUTURE

Weighing in at over 140 minutes, Unfold the Future is the longest of The Flower Kings' albums, and the third of their two-hour-plus monstrosities alongside Stardust We Are, Flower Power, and the subsequent Paradox Hotel. Later 2CD releases from them have either explicitly designated the second disc as bonus tracks or not used the entire running span of the CDs - the Kings perhaps belatedly have realised that 90 or so minutes of very high-quality music is more satisfying than over 2 hours of music which is a mixture of great moments and weaker ones.

Certainly, after two somewhat tighter releases (Space Revolver and The Rainmaker), one might have reason to worry that Roine Stolt and his buddies had once again decided to just stop editing and throw every musical idea they had into the album until they had once again filled two CDs to bursting point.

Honestly, the thing which kept tripping me up on past listen to this is the opening epic The Truth Will Set You Free. There's lots of fun musical sections in here - including some fusion-influenced material which comes close to making this their answer to The Gates of Delirium by Yes - but the song keeps getting sandbagged by underwhelming vocal performances, and it doesn't help that the vocal sections are fairly repetitive at that.

Unfortunately, things don't pick up once it's over. In early listens I had the impression that the Flower Kings had decided to include more vocals on this album - a problem since they seem particularly weak this time around. I don't think that's actually true - but the impression is given largely because the vocals often stand out in a bad way. The instrumental sections of the album are, by contrast, pretty solid (albeit less focused than The Rainmaker). There's so much in here to explore that I think Unfold the Future does, indeed, unfold its secrets after several listens, but it takes a lot of patience, and in particular you need to train yourself to just grin and bear it during the vocal sections. Can't help but think that going all-instrumental would have been a viable path here.