After two single disc albums, The Flower Kings return to their most successive format, the double disc studio album. It is quite astonishing to realize that this band is capable of producing so much brilliant material in such a short time. It’s even more remarkable because the brain behind the band, Roine Stolt, is also involved in major bands like Transatlantic and Caipa.

Unfold The Future opens with the thirty-minute epic “The Truth Will Set You Free”. A strange choice because this track sets most of the sound of this new album and I believe that this song would have had a better place at the end of the album. Clearly this song is the main track of the album and can be seen as an ode to classic Yes. One of the first things that strikes me is that bassist Jonas Reingold’s playing seems to get funkier and more jazzy by each and every album. This jazz approach is followed by new member, drummer Zoltan Csorsz. “The Truth Will Set You Free” is a great track that combines all good things on the album, another reason why it would have made a great closing track. The second track “Monkey Business” is a surprisingly straightforward rock song compared to the opening track. Although this is a quite catchy song and despite Stolts’ guitar work and Hasse Frobergs’ vocals, this isn’t one of the strongest tracks on the album. “Black and White” reminds me a lot of the experimental parts of the album Stardust We Are. Up-tempo experimenting follows a rather basic down tempo opening. This is one of the characteristics of The Flower Kings that deserves a lot of appreciation. There are three instrumental songs on Unfold the Future,”Constantinopel” is one of them and is nothing more than a jam session. It’s a nice change from the complex compositions of the first three tracks. Most bands decide to put in a soft balled at this point, a balled that usually sounds forced. The jam session loosens things up a little bit. The track explodes into the fourteen-minute epic “Silent Inferno”. After this strong opening the track sounds too much like it was a left over from previous recordings. Disc one ends with two easy tunes: “The Navigator” and “Vox Humana” of which the latter is the strongest although it reminds a bit of “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got”.

Disc two starts with the biting “Genie in a Bottle”, one of the most progressive songs with great vocal melody and harmony. The backing vocals were done by Daniel Gildenlow, known from the Swedish band Pain Of Salvation. As disc one’s opener, this is possibly the best track on disc two! “Fast Lane”, a track composed by piano player Thomas Bodin, is a strange song, stranger than all the other tracks. Up-tempo music is combined with experimental vocal harmonies and of course great syntersizer melodies. The tracks “Grand Old World” and “Soul Vortex” are the tracks mostly influenced by jazz. I for one love these tracks, but I can imagine that the basic prog-fan prefers a more guitar rock oriented approach. “Rollin’ The Dice” is another one of Thomas Bodins compositions, yes another strange, weird and mad song. This track is in great contrast to “Solitary Shell”, a beautiful and delicate piano piece written by the same Bodin. “The Devil’s Danceschool” and “Devil’s Playground” are the tracks that will bring the prog world into ecstasy. These tracks simply have got it all. Roines writing must be inspired by his experiences with Transatlantic here. Subtle and explosive, melodic and offending.

I’ve had a rather difficult time writing a proper review of this album since The Flower Kings’ music is not easy to put into words. When listening to the individual tracks, you start to wonder why Unfold the Future is such a strong album. Jam sessions like “Constantinopel” and “Soul Vortex” aren’t that interesting for most fans. The answer is clear; these tracks have a rather important function. After listening to complex epics, the listener can loosen up during the instrumentals. The real power of The Flower Kings lies in the album as a whole. I have no doubt that Roine and Co. could easily have written ten tracks like “Devil’s Playground”, but they chose not to do so, in order to focus on a well-balanced album. The band has succeeded with “Unfold The Future”, although I have to say that the band didn’t exceed their two-disc masterpiece Stardust We Are”