Reviewing a Flower Kings album is not an easy task.... That's why you will be able to read two reviews resulting from the same listening....
Objectively
New double CD for the Flower Kings, two years after Adam & Eve. New staff also, with a new drummer, in the person of Marcus Lillequist.
As usual, the Swedes offer us 2 hours of music full of ideas of all kinds, with however a more marked tendency to simplify some pieces (the ballad "Jealousy" for example). Not many really strong moments, except perhaps the instrumental "Pioneers of Aviation", in which the 4 instrumentalists go wild in turn, succeeding in making the images of a film dealing with this subject. The rest is rather coherent and without too much surprise, well in the band's tradition, the epic "Monsters and Men" which opens the first CD being the most obvious proof. Are we in the presence of a great Flower Kings? Frankly no, but this album will not separate the discography of the band.
The Flower Kings' music is demanding: it is difficult to perceive all its subtleties during the first listening, and this double album will require several passages before collecting its substantial auditory marrow. There will still be a few long passages that we will tend to skip.
Subjectively
A double-CD from Flower Kings (one more), and two hours of music to come. You might think it was enchanting, but in this case it's devilishly long.
The fault is due to tracks that are not really convincing (tracks 7 to 9 of the first CD), tracks that are downright annoying (the "Lucy Had A Dream" merry-go-round of wooden horses, repeated again and again), others where we don't understand the "sabotage" carried out on a few passages (the horrible voices tampered with on minimalist instruments). The fault also lies in a sound that is far too 70's, which despite all the quality of the instrumentalists ends up being boring. Finally, the fault is the absence of really strong moments, except for the instrumental "Pioneers of Aviation", or to a lesser extent "Monsters and Men" which from the top of its 20 minutes does not avoid the lengths.
I have only one thing to say to the band so that their next album can be included in my CD library: keep your talent, but make it shorter and more concise.