THE POWER TO BELIEVE

Lifting the VOG of the previous album, The Power to Believe is both lighter (not depressing) and heavier (more metal). Not really a return to form, this album allows Mastellotto to demonstrate his strong technical skills to good effect, and once again leans on Belew's strong song-writing skills to pull it through in the absence of quality compositions from Fripp. It is Belew that offers the more interesting tunes - 'The Power to Believe', 'Eyes Wide Open', 'Facts of Life' and 'Happy with what you have to be happy with' are the stand-out tracks here. Fripp, it would seem, has withered from his former ability to write cutting-edge original instrumentals (perhaps while trying to write 'FraKctured' from the previous album). The Fripp-based instrumentals ('Level Five', 'Elektrik', etc) are much more standard technical-metal - still good, but nothing special. It would seem that because Belew was the one who continued offering the most new ideas, both musically and lyrically, this marked him. Apparently, it was during the recording of this album that Fripp decided he no longer liked Belew (Sid Smith's Fripp-sanctioned biography suggests it was because Belew wanted to include a short acoustic piece that Fripp hadn't played on, even though Belew relented and went along with Fripp's decision to leave it off). While they toured the album, Crimson again went dormant afterwards. Then, when Fripp decided to once again raise a new Crimson for the recent 'greatest hits' tour (the current version), he made it clear that the new version would not include Belew. So, like Thrak, The Power to Believe represents another end of an era. It is a real shame, as Adrian Belew is not only such a musical talent, but I consider him to have pulled Crimson through the 80s and 90s - without his excellent song-writing skills, lyrics, and musical singing, Crimson wouldn't be what it is. And it is Belew that brings this album up to the four star level. I actually give this album 7.9 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which is the minimum necessary to achieve 4 PA stars in my rating scheme. It is clear that without Belew great contributions here, this would not have been attainable.

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