Prog-Nose

Before the start of the Symphorce festival, I went backstage for an interview with Roine Stolt of The Flower Kings. I found him very relaxed, eager to tell his story and clearly feeling happy about the festival and his last album “The Sum of no Evil”

Danny: Let’s start with the Title of your new album “The Sum of no Evil”. What does it stand for?

Roine: To start from the beginning, this probably goes back to the time of the previous album “Paradox Hotel”, In the case of The Flower Kings, you’re working on an album and already you start to plan for a next album, so it’s not an isolated thing.

Danny: Are all the musicians doing this, or just you?

Roine: Well mostly me, because I’m sort of the driver. So at that time I was thinking of the next album and how it was going to be. Something that’s going back to the early times of The Flower Kings, very melodic and symphonic. And I think, that’s what we do best. And I was also thinking of themes, ideas, graphics around it. I was thinking about a short snappy title that could almost stand like text, no image. And I thought about ‘Love’ because that’s, in my life, and in many people’s lives, the most important thing. If you have love for your family, your friends and the people, everything is going to be all right. But unfortunately there was another popular group from England that came out with an album called “Love”. (The Beatles). So the universe wasn’t big enough for two albums called “Love”. So I was looking for something that would say the same thing as love. And I switched ‘The Sum of all evil” back to “The Sum of no Evil” almost coming back to love again.

Danny: This is the first album, I like for one hundred percent, without wanting to skip some tracks because they are too jazzy, too improvised, too chaotic,… Did you intentionally leave out these pieces?

Roine: Yes, we did and we did it for the reason that after a while you’re recording albums and touring, you realize that there are some sections that sound really good, when the band plays this type of sound. This sound is sort of unique. We have poppy songs, some jazzy, like you say and experimental things, which are very interesting to do. But we were thinking about making an album with just this Flower Kings sound.

Danny: Maybe I could say it’s the first complete Flower Kings album since “The Flower King”.

Roine: Yeah, in a way, because we left out everything that went in an experimental way. And you don’t want to make the same album over and over again. I think you probably won’t be alone. There’s going to be lots of fans who really like this CD and who are going to say it’s the first album they really, really like. If we had done this on the first ten albums, nobody would have noticed. But now you have fans who like “Adam and Eve” or “Rainmaker” and it’s all coming together now. This is also something we can play live on stage and I know it’s going to sound great.

Danny: The only weird song is the Brimstone track. But that’s drummed so well, I don’t skip it either. Is there a link with the Circus Brimstone track from Stardust We Are?

Roine: Well, it’s just a title. Brimstone is that yellowish thing. I think it’s in the book of Revelation that it says that the beast is going to come out of the lake of brimstone.

Danny: So the 999 is the reverse of 666

Roine: Yes, it’s just for fun. Maybe the fans will turn the sleeve after a while and realize there’s 666 on it. It keeps them occupied. ;-)

Danny: During the first track “One More Time”, there’s a piece of Watcher of the Skies (Genesis)?

Roine: We didn’t intend to do that, but you can probably find four bars that sounds like Yes , Pink Floyd or Queen or Led Zeppelin. You listen to music and then you play and write and you unintentionally put in some influences. And I think it’s not a bad thing.

Danny: How about the extra tracks on the special edition?

Roine: There are three extra tracks and two films. Two of the tracks, we recorded at the same time as the album.

Danny: Is it InsideOut who wants to release a limited edition or is it the band?

Roine: I suppose it’s a little bit of both. I think the real die hard fans of the band want the more elaborated digipacks with a lot of pages in the booklet and extra songs. This one isn’t really a limited edition, because they release, I think, 10,000 of it. It’s rather a special edition. But I like it and other bands like it too when their companies release this extra editions.

Danny: Zoltan is back. Did he want to come back or did you ask him?

Roine: Well, first of all, it’s not one hundred percent correct to say he’s back. He played on the record because our drummer of the time, Marcus, was also in another band and had other commitments. We found out to late, he didn’t inform us in time. So we had a studio booked and we had no drummer. So we said: “Why don’t we call Zoltan?”.

Danny: And then teach him not to play jazz. ;-)

Roine: Hahaha, yeah. But apart from being a good jazz drummer, Zoltan has a lot more to offer. And looking at progressive rock, most of the good drummers I like, like Bill Bruford or Carl Palmer or going back to Colloseum, John Hiseman, they have a jazz background. Even Mitch Mitchell who played with Jimi Hendrix was kind of a jazz drummer. I like that kind of vibe. It’s interesting when you fuse that with symphonic rock, these drummers can do a lot of things that drummers with a more simple style can’t do. And that’s my main problem with a lot of symphonic rock, the drummers are too stiff and too square headed.

Danny: It seems as if Tomas Bodin had a new start since “I Am”, his solo album, playing Hammond, Fender Rhodes, Minimoog and Mellotron. It’s as if his “I Am” and your “Wall Street Voodoo” were prequels to this new album.

Roine: The main reason is, we recorded this in a studio in the southern parts of Sweden and they had wonderful mixing desks and old microphones from the sixties and seventies and also some fantastic keyboards, like Wurlitzer, Fender Rhodes and a Hammond. And Tomas and myself recently bought minimoogs. It’s probably what we were looking for all the time, because all the modern synthesizers have hundreds of presets, but nothing compares to the real thing. Even if I would play pop music, I would go for that instruments, because that’s the sound I like. I’m even happy to hear Elton John, who I disliked for many, many years, because I thought it was crap. But he released an album recently that went back to the old sounds of Hammond and Grand Piano and stuff like that and he started to sound really decent.

Danny: No more Kaipa, no more Tangent? Do you have any projects left besides TFK?

Roine: No, for me right now, it’s just Flower Kings. I stopped working with Kaipa because we didn’t get along very well. I didn’t have the freedom to work the way I wanted. I wanted them to back to the original Kaipa sound. Most of the new material was too technical and didn’t have the right feeling. And I never meant to be a member of The Tangent. I just happened to play on their first album.

Danny: How about the cover painting? Does it have any link with the tracks or lyrics?

Roine: No, not really. When we recorded the album, we started making a nice cd cover and then you start looking with different companies and graphic people. We tried a few, but they were occupied with other things. So we were left in the middle of nowhere and had no idea where to go. But I have a friend in Russia, called Ed Unitsky, who also did the stuff for The Tangent. And he’s been sending me many things over the years. I didn’t want it done with computer graphics, I really like a real painting, this time, like The Paradox Hotel. And then he sent me some painting, and I have to say, this guy can paint. And then suddenly one day, he sends this bus with a fish tail. And I was sitting there looking at it and smiling. But I didn’t see it fit with the sum of no evil. But it made me smile, so I thought, why not. In history there were so many different covers that didn’t have a link to the tracks. So, I showed it to the other guys and to InsideOut and everyone liked it.