It’s probably accepted by many people who have followed the career of The Flower Kings that the prime years for them were the albums that ranged from the official band debut, ‘Back in the world of Adventures’ (1995) through to the peak of the era ‘Space Revolver’ (2000).

The work that followed on from this time was by no means less prolific and has examples of some of their best moments however there was a sense that some of the spark and sheer wonderment of the earlier work was lacking. Indeed by 2007 the experience seemed exhausted for some, with the feeling that the music was going through the motions and as a result the band was put on a break for the next five years.

Last year the return of the regular line-up produced ‘The Banks of Eden’ (2012) which signaled a new charge driven in part by the lively and talented drummer Felix Lehrmann. The heavier, gutsy sound was a continuation of the harder edge that had shaped the group over the past decade, with all the elements that made up The Flower Kings still present.

Fast forward to now and the new release, ‘Desolation Rose’ and we see that the band have embarked on a new methodology which ironically provides the listener with 60 minutes of familiar music which firmly places it high up among the bands aforementioned peak period. Rather than arriving at the studio with the new material prepared, the approach was much more of an organic, cohesive effort of ideas and creativity. The results are exciting and varied and yet the sound is pure Flower Kings, pure Prog and kingly epic.

An initial first glance at the track listings and the die-hard fan might begin to wonder where the regular 25 minute song is this time around. But fear not, Desolation Rose is essentially a continual piece where the melodies and passages that open the first half are revisited in the closing sections. A powerful ascending refrain, very typically Flower Kings, crops up from time to time, effectively bringing it together and ensuring a neatly stitched continuity. The tracks bleed into each other like chapters in a novel adding to the overall joined up assembly. After several listens it begins to feel similar to ‘Garden of Dreams’ from ‘Flower Power’ (1999) in its journey-like experience. The connection to this album is likely emphasised in the input from Thomas Bodin who like ‘Flower Power’ has had a bigger contribution this time in the making of ‘Desolation Rose’.
Bodin’s contributions are spectacular, providing a dazzling symphonic base for the frequently soaring guitar from Stolt. The stand out moments from him are everywhere, but ‘Desolation Road’ (not rose) is perhaps one of the greatest of them, from the gentle piano opening to the glorious choral symphonies – “While the road to desolation….lingers on….” and finishing with a growling angry wild animal of an organ over a pounding Lehrmann beat .

However the darker themes around the realities of war and suffering contrast the dream like qualities of Garden and are more evenly presented than their earlier opus too. That said, after many listens to the ambiguous lyrics and there is still uncertainty about the imagery and meanings. Yet this is a good thing, rather like sitting at an abstract painting in a gallery and seeing something new each time.
It is clear enough to see though that ‘Desolation Rose’ is TFK’s outcry and dismay at the world and its problems. Particularly conflict, and the senselessness of it. The latter is dealt with in ‘White Tuxedos’, a bleak picture of the inevitable conclusions of war, the title referring to the shroud of white over the dead. It’s a tale where there are no winners, neither from civilians or the soldiers who are sent to the four corners of the earth to fight under a flag of peace. The looping mantra of Nixon telling us of his desire for peace over and over again is a particularly chilling bookend to the track.

Following the intensity of White Tuxedos there is the almost certain contender for some of the finest Flower Kings magic anywhere. ‘Resurrected Judas’ ( him again) features some sublime guitar from Stolt over with a driving middle section instrumental, underpinned by some incredible bass and drums which is classic TFK, with shades of Genesis from a time when they made your skin tingle.

The darkest moments of this album are still matched with some regular TFK celebration at the beauty of the universe and the view from space at the earth. In ‘Blood of Eden’, our home is presented, still green and beautiful, -“We are Stardust and we are sun kissed”)- and we hear a pleading call to the heavens to a higher power to provide an answer to the problems we make.

Somewhat coldly though we are returned to the reality of the world in the closing gospel-like lament of ‘Silent Graveyards’-“in silent graveyards we look for saviours” – a reprise of the title track. The lonely desperation builds towards the finale where there is a hopeful prayer for a promised land and for an end to suffering, closing with a desperate agonising scream, from the impressive vocal abilities of Hasse Fröberg. There probably isn’t a Flower Kings album that closes as powerful as this, with the exception of the majestic end of ‘Stardust We Are’ (1997)

Without doubt the band have produced something spectacular again with this album,  If there is such a thing as a flawless release this would be nudging to be a member of that club. Quite how they have pulled it off again is a mystery as it was written and produced in a time frame that is almost beyond belief. Much more than a stop gap between now and the next Transatlantic, this is an album that should be regular favourite for many fans and still talked about as one of the very best.

We’re not getting any younger, none of us are… (Brad Birzer-Happy Birthday!)

I’m now rather depressingly at the stage where I find myself saying out loud,
“In my day things were better than they are now…” or “When I was a young lad we played outside every day, walked two miles to school in shorts in six feet of snow and tortured frogs for fun.
When it comes to Prog though it’s not the case, things are better now than they were, even with its relative obscurity and damn near financial bankruptcy.
What are you mad Eric? The Prog scene is better now than it was forty years ago?
Sure, some of the best loved and most successful albums of the Progressive rock genre belong to the seventies, sales were in the millions and concerts were gigantic spectacles and the artists were larger than life characters. But that was short lived and the years that followed were lean and as one clever Yorkshire man summed it up it was a time that the ‘Music died alone.’ It was tough, I remember it well and yet the one thing that saved me was the beginnings of the revolution we now use twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

The Lamb dies down…
I was a late entry to University in ’89 and consequently I didn’t quite fit in. I was too old for the fresh-out-of-school-club, and too young for the mature student category. Combine that with the most unpopular and uncool taste in music and my first year a Uni was a lonely time.
It peaked one evening when I got lucky and walked a girl back to my room in the halls after a few drinks in the student bar. She told me with a shout over the noise of a rather poor student rock band, that she was a fan of Genesis. My spirits soared and I couldn’t believe my luck. She was gorgeous, truly sensational and so far out of my league that I didn’t stand a chance, but none of that mattered, she liked my favourite group. I was going to get married and planned out the rest of my life with her before I got back to my room.
Sadly it was rather short lived. Moments after she settled back into a beanbag on the floor I nervously slid out my vinyl copy of ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ and turned round to face her as the tinkling piano of Tony Banks began to build in intensity.
“What’s this you’re playing?” she inquired.
I will never forget the baffled look on her face when I told her that she was listening to Genesis. It turns out she though Genesis was Phil Collins and Phil Collins was Genesis and wondered what it was I was playing, it wasn’t  ‘Another day in Paradise’ (for her or for me…) and when Peter sang “The lamb seems right out of place,” it seemed that there was never a truer word spoken.
She didn’t stay and made an determined effort to avoid me whenever she saw me around and about.
I got rather down about Prog, I mean, how could someone instantly lose their attraction for a person because of their musical taste? After that and for a short while I didn’t play much and dabbled with the Stone Roses and some of the early punk- grunge from Seattle.

Dialing back to my roots…

Going back to my point, it was the revolution in technology that brought me back from the wilderness and helped me to rediscover my love of Prog and it’s the same technology now that makes it a strong, independent force today, underpinning  a passionate fan-base, and it’s the technology that’s the future for the music, not any one band.

Before HTTP and web browsers there was Usenet, the newsgroups and bulletins through the College network. These were a lifeline to me at University in 1990. Basic text discussions with people in America about YES and Pink Floyd was suddenly a reality. And email too! I used to print off the discussions to read in my room in my own time. Stacks and stacks of stripy paper from the dot matrix filled with a love of Progressive Rock.
Naturally the first browsers followed and dial up with 14440 BPS which was stupidly expensive but it gave me home access to the newsgroups.
It’s no coincidence that Prog’s third wave began soon after in the mid-nineties and has gathered pace ever since. Andy Tillison with his first MP3 upload, Marillion and their cottage industry rebirth after EMI and of course digital mail order (1998 and an early web purchase of ‘Stardust we are’) with the rest of the world all ensured its survival and its future.

I might have recently said that Hyperbole on the social networks was the work of the horned beast and that it was the fault of the internet in general. It’s still true and I stand by that but I need to clarify that despite all that, I think we need it for Prog to avoid being lost in the wilderness again. Ironically I realise it makes me look like I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Actually no I’m not, anything but.

Viva la revolution, long live Prog, and long live the internet!

You know there’s one thing that really gets my goat…
Before I carry on I should point out that there are many things actually, including false opening statements like the one above. I’m now in my mid-forties and true to form my dormant grumpy gene has kicked in, and having an online social network presence is not the ideal place for someone with a growing affiliation to Victor Meldrew. (Sorry people of the US, pick another great pompous moaner from TV, Fraiser Crane perhaps?) Reading people’s comments and sweeping generalisations on a daily basis pushes all the buttons to get me to DEFCON 1, it’s not good.

And it’s not your fault or mine; we are all a product of the social revolution with all its benefits and woes.

Okay back to my point, the one thing that annoys me on a daily basis, oh bollocks, here I go again. It’s not one thing. Actually…this is my point. Exaggeration used to create a strong impression. The dreaded HYPERBOLE.

Actually Hyperbole isn’t all bad, I should say this now. In literary terms it has great uses and allows us to understand the character or story in a short, effective passage. “He’s got tons of money.” or “I have a million things to do.” These types of hyperbole work. However it’s when we look online, visiting blogs and forums and reading people’s updates and reviews that Hyperbole becomes the engorged tool of the devil. It all turns a little triumphalist. I know. I have seen it a million times….

“Mila Kunis is the sexiest woman alive,” apparently.
Well she is pretty and probably a contender. But come on! How would anyone know that? Has the person who made this crap piece of lazy journalism walked the length of the earth like some obsessed Forrest Gump type checking on all the women alive before deciding it is in fact Kunis? Yes indeed he might have, it’s highly likely he’s done some research late at night on the computer when his wife is asleep in bed, but that still doesn’t qualify the statement. Yes it’s a judgement call based on a tiny sample of the voting public, but for crying out loud, it’s just not true.

Progressive Rock fans are no exception, especially those that write about it online.
In fact in music genre terms they are perhaps the World’s worst for hyperbole. (see what I did there…)
Maybe it’s something connected to the epic quality of the music that brings out the overblown statement, or just the fact that as fan’s we know that the world isn’t really listening and they should be, so we bolster the music with exaggeration and unrealistic amplification? As  fans go, they stand out for committing this particular writing sin more so than many other music categories.
With Pop music  the opposite of hyperbole seems to happen (What is the opposite? Hypobole?)
Rather than resort to overstatement, we are bombarded with sky high superlatives instead, against the backdrop of choral theme music and a man with a ridiculously deep shouty voice. See the X-Factor/American Idol for evidence of this.
“Have you heard the new single by Jessie J? It’s a masterpiece!” 
Somewhere, someone online may be saying this yet if this is so, it’s not close to the grand scale of trumpet blowing that follows each new Prog release.  Does this mean that Progressive rock is better than everything else and the only true source of music perfection, or are we occasionally in danger of disappearing up our own epic-length arseholes?

So far this year we have seen a dozen of entries in the “album of the year contenders” category and, probably the same again in ‘masterpieces’ and classics. I can’t walk through some of the popular discussion groups without tripping over these pedestals.

Is it really true that the new ‘Haken’ album is a masterpiece or the latest ‘Magenta’ release? Both are certain to be excellent and well worth a look, for sure. But masterpieces they are not, nowhere near. By ranking them as this we do a disservice to the very music we love because we elevate it far too much and look subjective and a little obsessive, like musical equivalents of anoraks to the uninterested music world.
“Who cares, we’re fans and we can review our albums just how we want, why should we be worried?” Well we should, because the next band to break through and make Progressive rock massive again is probably out there but they are weighed down by huge amounts of hyperbolic bling from their core fans.

Putting that aside, let’s take a look at example of the new Haken again as a potential masterpiece and see if the cap fits. If the term masterpiece can be applied to any music of the last fifty years then lets classify ‘Close to the Edge’ by Yes and ‘Dark side of the moon’ from Pink Floyd as such and add Haken’s “The Mountain” into that club. Suddenly I see everything that winds me up about the internet. Short sightedness and a need to make everything better than everything else, ever. How can we take a review seriously that boasts about a new album, barely two weeks warm, summing it up as a true masterpiece? Ten out of ten. The danger is once we use the term we then have to find new ways of describing something even greater. Like the race for the next size of storage capacity or super-fast processor, we need a ‘mega-masterpiece’ or a ‘giga-piece’.

Ultimately it’s fair to say that none of the above are masterpieces, not even Yes or Pink Floyd. It’s hard to see any of these albums influencing and inspiring people a hundred years from now in the same way that Bach, Mozart, Debussy or Stravinsky have done for centuries and still do. Hell, even my spell check knows who these people are. These are the truest representations of the word and need no hyperbole to remind us how magnificent they were. If you ever doubt the validity of this, have a chat with those musicians whose work we elevate to such lofty heights, in fact I did and this is the result.

As for the over statements on the internet, I couldn’t change it in a million years. No word of a lie.