I have never been the world's most enthusiastic Flower Kings fan, but this DVD is helping to change that. This performance really highlights what impressive musicians these guys are, and how they are able to elevate their music to the next level on the live stage. I first became a Roine Stolt fan through his work with Transatlantic, and from there I delved into The Flower Kings. Stolt is an amazing guitarist who cleverly blends elements of jazz, rock, blues and pop into his own very distinctive style. His vocals are even more distinctive, and are really what gives The Flower Kings their signature sound. As the primary songwriter of the band however, he often wears himself a little too thin with all of his side projects. I find much of The Flower Kings' music to be repetitive and tedious, but each album always contains just enough flashes of brilliance to keep me hanging on.
The video begins with some grainy, backstage, camcorder footage which eventually transitions to the main stage screen, which is displaying colorful images of the cosmos, as a NASA space launch countdown sequence is being played. As the countdown reaches the end, you get a "we have ignition" to signal the start of the show, but instead, everything goes silent except for the sound of a ping pong ball being bounced around, as psychedelic inkblot images are flashed on the screen. Typical Flower Kings quirkiness. The band soon takes the stage and kicks things off with the title track of the new album, which proves to be the most straight ahead rocker of the night.
Gone from the band is hired gun, Daniel Gildenlow, from Pain Of Salvation, who had been with them since 2002's Unfold The Future. Joining the band is new drummer Marcus Liliequist, who replaces Zoltan Csörsz. Where Csörsz' dazzling drumming demanded your focus every time he entered the screen, due to a style that was more befitting of some intense jazz fusion band, Liliequist simply holds down the groove, never too flashy, but never missing the beat. No wonder Paradox Hotel sounds so different. Stolt is sporting some hideous, light colored, floral suite, which makes him stick out like a sore thumb on stage, but he is in fine form this night, welcoming the Dutch crowd, in his heavily Swedish-accented English. Now that's odd.
Another Paradox Hotel song follows, the catchy "Hit Me With A Hit", which showcases some of the bands killer harmony vocals, and sounds like it could have been a lost track from Yes' 90125 album.. From there, they mix in the occasional classic number such as "In The Eyes Of The World", from 1997's Stardust We Are, and "I Am The Sun", from 2000's Space Revolver. It was cool to hear these two gems, since they were not included on the Meet The Flower Kings DVD.
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