The Flower Kings Sweden
"I was reluctant to listen to this at first, since it's such a juggernaut at 90+ minutes. But what a pleasant surprise! It was never boring, even though this is quite typically Flower Kings. They're doing everything right here, and the songwriting is quite inspired and fresh, within their stylistic framework."
"Another stroke of genius. Vastly different from their darker and highly melodic Paradox Hotel and a nod to the jazz of Space Revolver, the happiness of Stardust we are, and the positive melody-writing of Adam and Eve. This album completely kicks out their tendencies to make an album-flow with short songs, intermissions and interludes. Instead, this is just a a set of long songs that stand on their own. Also, most of the acoustic delicacy and mainstream qualities and completely gone, which is both a positive and negative thing: it depends on your musical tastes. If you tend to enjoy more the easier-digested neo-prog and classic rock (not necessarily prog), this might be bad news. This album is very bombastic and has a big big sound and really does give you any breaks to catch your breath. It's constantly bombarding you with intense music, whether happy or dark. Oh yea, this album is most of the time extremely positive, so if you're into the depressing tone of Pink Floyd, and Porcupine tree, the sugary flower-power, peace-love for all tone in most of the disc might turn you off. Also, another warning is the inaccessible notion of "The Sum of No Evil"; it is very complex and sometimes choppy, which actually made me conclude that this was by far their worst effort in the first three listens. This album contains some of the best moments of the Flower Kings which unfortunately may not always gel together or are consistently on the same lever to create a masterpiece like Space Revolver, and suffer from some bad lyrics."
"Great new release by the Flower kings. More reminiscent of "Stardust we are" than of more recent releases like Unfold the future and Adam and Eve. Their best album since Space revolver (together with Unfold the future perhaps, this album being so complex that i'm still not sure about the end evaluation here)."
"From the 4 double cd's this is definitely the most consistent and also the most accessible effort. the first cd is great with only the track "just this once" falling somewhat short.
The second cd is also very good. Tracks like "pipes of peace", "Don of the universe" and "Hotel Nirvana" introduce the main tune of the great epic "Stardust we are part 1"
The Flower Kings come higly recommended and this is the album to begin with."
"The first 18 tracks are part of one concept called the Garden of dreams, Afterlife and Power of kindness are reflections of the tunes played in Garden of dreams and could have been added to this song.
Listening to Garden of dreams i always get the feeling of being in another fairytale world. One of the best 60 minutes of music i know.
The second cd is not nearly as good but there are some good moments here and it's always listenable."
"I can't really put my finger on any specific problem with this album - but somehow I think that it might be their worst. It is not bad - but in my opinion it is just not as good as their other releases, and at the same time it is quite inconsistent. One of my favorite tracks is Vampire's View, but to be honest - it sounds like a Pain of Salvation track."
"This record introduced me to the Flower Kings. I downloaded the track City of Angels and was struck with awe: Very clever chord progressions, together with totally emotional and inspired vocals, and a very natural use of 11/4 in the verse, captain future style keyboard interludes ... very nice.
It's not the best FK album to start with, although it worked for me. I'd go for Stardust first. It's more diverse than The Rainmaker, which is a bit mellow as a whole (although one of the key aspects of FK/Stolt is dynamics and contrasts)."
