The Flower Kings

Roine Stolt leads the venerable Swedish prog-rockers into the future by mining their past

- By Gregory Adams

Roine Stolt moved backwards to progress for his Flower Kings’ latest double album, By Royal Decree. While prepping the band’s 15th full-length, the Swedish prog great had been remixing a series of Nineties-period Flower Kings records for an upcoming set of reissues. That nostalgic look back also included rediscovering decades’ worth of unused recordings he had tucked away. He liked what he heard.

“I was listening back to music we did 20 years ago, and music I’d done even before that. I could feel there was something different. Some of it felt more exciting — maybe not as professional, almost childish,” Stolt suggests of riffs he found while combing through digital file folders of song ideas, some of which are finally coming to pass on