The Sum of No Evil (2007)Tomas Bodin - piano, organ, synthesizers, mellotron
Hasse Fröberg - vocals, guitars
Jonas Reingold - bass guitar
Roine Stolt - vocals, guitars, additional keyboards
Zoltan Csörsz - drums
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1. "One More Time"
2. "Love Is The Only Answer"
3. "Trading My Soul"
4. "The Sum Of No Reason"
5. "Flight 999 Brimstone Air" (Tomas Bodin)
6. "Life In Motion"
(all songs written and composed by Roine Stolt, except where indicated)
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We move now to The Sum of No Evil, the band's 10th studio album. This is a single album with only six songs, and it's pretty much a non-stop prog fest. While most of their other albums have a nice diversity of different styles and whatnot, this is an album full of nothing but prog songs. Even the two shorter songs are very proggy, albeit in shorter song form. And while that might seem natural - a full-fledged prog band doing a full-fledged prog album - I don't think it worked out well. In short, this record was a massive letdown for me following the utter brilliance of Paradox Hotel. It almost seemed like, after writing songs in a simpler fashion on Paradox Hotel, they tried to write songs with more complex arrangements, instead of letting the songs grow naturally. All of the longer songs kind of have that padded "hey, let's do something to make this song longer" feel. That is a frequent criticism of the progressive rock genre in general, and I think the Flower Kings usually do a good job of not falling into that trap, but not this time, IMO.
At first, I thought maybe it was just a bit of initial disappointment cause it followed such a great album, but time has not been kind to it; it's just kind of there. It's not a bad album by any means, but it's not really outstanding in any way. Every song has something in it that I think, "Okay, this is really cool; now we're getting somewhere," but in every instance, something comes along that just lets the air out of the balloon. Take for example, Life in Motion, which starts off really cool with a nice intro and a cool verse, but then we get to the limp chorus that sounds completely uninspired, and the song never really recovers from that, even with a nice ending section (that is totally tacked on, following the song coming to a complete stop).
I have long stated that One More Time is their most boring full-length song (not counting really short transitional pieces) ever, and while a recent listen was a bit less unfavorable than usual, I stand by that opinion; it's just a boring song, and it being the first track on the album gives it that stuttering feeling, like it takes forever for the record to come to life., and in a sense, it never really recovers from that.
Plus, after there being a ton of acoustic guitar and piano on the previous record, we don't hear much of either on this record.
I don't want this review to be totally negative, so I will reiterate that there are some things I like about this record. Love Is the Only Answer might be totally bloated and overly long, but it has some dynamite sections; Trading My Soul has a very cool vibe during the slower verses; The Sum on No Reason has a great beginning and ending; etc. Really, I can turn this album on and let it play from start to finish, uninterrupted, and there is nothing that really bothers me, but there just isn't a lot that gets me excited. And considering how much I love this band, and most of their other albums, I can't call this album anything else than a disappointment.