Sweden's gift to Progressive Rock. Originally formed as the touring band for Roine Stolt's solo album The Flower King, The Flower Kings later became a full band that has been going strong for over twenty-five years now.
Band Members
- Roine Stolt - Guitars and vocals, additional bass and keyboards
- Hasse Fröberg - Vocals and guitars, additional percussion
- Tomas Bodin - Keyboards
- Jonas Reingold - Bass
- Ola Heden - Vocals, keyboards and guitars
- Erik Hammarström - Drums
Former band members are:
- Michael Stolt - Bass
- Jamie Salazar - Drums
- Zoltan Csorsz - Dums
- Marcus Lillequist - Drums
- Daniel Gildenlöw - Vocals, guitars and percussion
Other Flower Kings collaborators include:
- Ulf Wallander - Alto Saxophone
- Hasse Brunuisson - Percussion
- Pat Mastelotto - Drums
Studio albums:
- The Flower King 1994 - recorded by the eventual band and counted as part of their discography despite being Stolt's solo album.
- Back in the World of Adventures (1995)
- Retropolis (1996)
- Stardust We Are (1997) (double album)
- Flower Power (1999) (double album)
- Space Revolver (2000)
- The Rainmaker (2001)
- Unfold the Future (2002) (double album)
- Adam & Eve (2004)
- Paradox Hotel (2006) (double album)
- Sum of No Evil (2007) (originally called Love)
- Banks of Eden (2012)
- Desolation Rose (2013)
- Waiting for Miracles (2019)
- Islands (2020)
Tropes present:
- Album Filler: Sadly, most of their stuff that isn't Epic Rocking is this.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Roine Stolt, the Flower King himself, sometimes comes off as this.
- Cover Version: Their second compilation album, The Road Back Home, includes a cover of "The Cinema Show".
- Creepy Circus Music: The instrumental "Circus Brimstone".
- Epic Rocking: It's basically their raison d'être. Every album usually includes at least one song (usually more) that tops ten minutes, and they have several other songs that top twenty minutes, the most extreme examples being "The Truth Will Set You Free" (31:01) and "Garden of Dreams" (59:16; each movement is however listed as a separate track, and the live version on Meet the Flower Kings shortens it to around 45 minutes by skipping over several movements).
- Genre Shift: Roine Stolt's Wall Street Voodoo, a blues album
- Guest-Star Party Member: Daniel Gildenlöw of Pain of Salvation and Pat Matselotto of King Crimson have joined the band on separate occasions.
- Instrumentals: Most of their albums have at least one instrumental track.
- Large Ham: Hasse Froberg, in stark contrast tot the rest of the band.
- Lighter and Softer: Definitely on the bright and sunny side of Progressive Rock. As they put it: The Sum of No Evil.
- Miniscule Rocking: Several tracks from their first few albums last less than one minute in length, with the shortest being "Ikea By Night": a four-second drum fill leading into "Astral Dog".
- Our Vampires Are Different: "A Vampire's View", a Villain Song featuring Daniel Gildenlöw as an Anne Rice-style vampire.
- The Power of Love: Their main recurring lyrical theme.
- Revolving Door Band: They went through a fair share of bassists, drummers and miscellaneous band members before arriving at the current line-up. Roine jokingly referred to his band as the Spinal Tap of Progressive Rock.
- Vocal Tag Team
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Roine
- Wolverine Publicity: Roine again. He's one of the biggest names in prog, and has made guest appearances on more prog records than you can shake a Slipperman at.
