Band:	The Flower Kings
Album:	The Sum Of No Evil
Style:	Progressive rock
Release date:	September 25, 2007
A review by:	Jeff

01. One More Time
02. Love Is The Only Answer
03. Trading My Soul
04. The Sum Of No Reason
05. Flight 999 Brimstone Air
06. Life In Motion

[The Limited Edition bonus disc]
01. The River
02. Turn The Stone
03. Regal Divers [demo]
+ Love Is The Only Answer [video]
+ Bonusviews [video]

What can I add about the monsters of Progressive music from Sweden? The Flower Kings are probably among the best rock musicians on Earth, and their whole discography is already legendary. The Flower Kings is definitely not mainstream too and their last effort, "The Sum Of No Evil" will never be played on a radio shows (or only after midnight then?). But "The Sum Of No Evil" is, one more time with the Flower Kings, a great album of Progressive Rock which will satisfy the fans of the band , like all the other people who like to listen to Genesis, Camel, King Crimson and a lot of other Progressive combos which come from the 70's?

The music of "The Sum Of No Evil" is really complex. Come on guys and gals, The Flower Kings plays 70's Progressive Rock which means that you'll not find anything heavy or aggressive in their compositions but damn you'll be able to find long songs which a lot of breaks. It's The Flower Kings, all their songs are like the ones of "The Sum Of No Evil", long, complex as hell (with longs keyboards/guitars soli and instrumental passages) with in addition the beautiful tender voice of Roine Stolt. It's a really impressive musical demonstration which is however easy of access and which cannot be boring if you just pretend to like Rock music. If I should use a word to describe "The Sum Of No Evil" I think that I should go for "cute" which is a perfect description, without anything pejorative, to the music of The Flower Kings. It's beautiful and touching even if on the other side it's a really deep and technical music? Not a lot of bands and artists nowadays are able to do that (except maybe some people like Daniel of POS who has played also iwith the Flower Kings? strange isn't it?).

One more time the performance of our favorite Swedish hippies is amazing. These guys simply rock and even if some of you will always say that their music is too "cute" or "happy flower" stuff, I have to say that at least we're here in front of real musicians (nothing that you can compare to the tons of trendy bad Power Metal bands). The recording of "The Sum Of No Evil" is perfect, nothing to say and I really love the cover with this funny "WolksvagenFishVan". This album is simply cute, the long songs (from five to twenty five minutes) are super interesting musically speaking and catchy on a side but let's be honest too, The Flower Kings has just released a "new" album which is maybe a bit too similar to their previous releases. It's really good but definitely not original?

"The Sum Of No Evil" is a cute lovely album of Progressive Rock. The fans of the genre will enjoy it a lot but the fans of The Flower Kings, even if there is nothing wrong to say about this album, will probably regret that the combo plays one more time, without any changes, "their" music. As you can understand, "The Sum Of No Evil" is a good but totally unsurprising album, be sure to check it if you like good classic 70's Progressive music but don't expect anything new here.