Recent Reviews

May 2025

March 2025

February 2025

January 2025

December 2024

November 2024

[ More Music Reviews ]


The Flower Kings: Love
The Flower Kings - Love Album Art

The Flower Kings: Love

Melodic Progressive Rock
5.0/5.0

Three decades on and still going strong is the iconic progressive rock band, The Flower Kings, founded by veteran multi-instrumentalist and composer Roine Stolt. Since 1994, The Flower Kings have been known as contemporary purveyors of classic melodic progressive rock made prominent in the 1960's and 1970's by bands like Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, and many more.

The Flower Kings - Click For Larger Image

The Flower Kings

The quintet arrives with their 17th studio album, Love, which features the arrival of new keyboard player Lalle Larsson from Karmakanic. As I've said elsewhere and often about any Flower Kings album, I'm a huge fan of the Roine Stolt, the band, and classic melodic prog rock as a genre. Ergo, expect no impartial objectivity or opinions here. Love is classic Flower Kings and a fine listen.


That is to say, you can expect creativity, intrigue, and accessibility in the arrangements, then made alive and lively by superb and deft musicianship. You'll also find that traditional TFK trademark of tag-team intertwining play between guitar and keyboards within most every song. Then there's Stolt's fine stand alone guitar solos, which will please every fan of lead guitar. Then all things are wrapped in effortless song melody and harmony, exact, yet playful, rock rhythm and groove, and delightful vocal harmony.

Love features several longer pieces indicative of classic prog: Considerations, The Elder, We Claim The Moon, and Burning Both Edges (videos below for the latter two). But also some more shorter compact songs under five minutes: The Rubble, The Promise, and How Can You Leave (video above). Common to most any TFK album are instrumentals including World Spinning and Kaiser Razor.

All in all, and simply, Love is classic and iconic Flower Kings: delivering equally classic, creative, and terrific melodic progressive for our contemporary music universe. If you like the band and the genre, you will definitely dig it. Easily recommended.



CraigHartranft.net - New fiction, crime fiction by Craig Hartranft

Note: All Amazon advertising in this review first benefits the artist, then Craig Hartranft also receives a residual. Click, and thanks for your support.

The Take Away

All in all, and simply, Love is classic and iconic Flower Kings: delivering equally classic, creative, and terrific melodic progressive for our contemporary music universe. If you like the band and the genre, you will definitely dig it. Easily recommended.

Support the artist, click the link below to buy the album at Amazon (US site) in your favorite format.

Purchase The Flower Kings - Love at Amazon
Find A Review

Alphabetical Index

a b c d e f g h i j
k l m n o p q r s t
u v w x y z #
New & Notable
Read the Gotthard: Stereo Crush Album Review

Here's a fun fact about Swiss legends, Gotthard: their last 16 releases, excepting their debut album, went to number one in their home country, making them one of Switzerland's most successful acts and ... [ Read More ]

February 2025 Stats
  • Views: 13K
  • Active Users: 3.5K
  • New Users: 2.8K
  • Event Count: 39K
  • Source: Google Analytics