TO THE POWER OF THREE

Ooooooh boy, not good, not good. Have you ever had one of those moments where all signs point to a product like an album or a movie or a game or whatever being utter horse manure, yet you suppress your better judgment and waste your precious time, perhaps even money on it anyway out of some faint hope that it'll maybe end up being good? ... Yeah. I knew that this album was released at a time when most progressive rock musicians were being forced to sustain themselves by putting out painfully hackneyed pop rock nonsense for mass consumption, and that Emerson & Palmer had replaced one of the most distinctive voices of the genre by a complete unknown whose biggest claim to fame is this one-time collaboration that nobody remembers, but on the other hand: um? well, it's got a multi-part suite! And hey, Emerson, Lake & Powell turned out to have at least a little bit of merit after all. It's fair to at least expect something of that standard, right? If only we were that lucky?

I don't have proof of this, but I'm convinced that this album was pumped out just to fulfil some sort of contractual obligation. Or maybe the guys just wanted a new car. All I know is that no love went into making this product at all. It is so depressingly devoid of originality and energy that I can't believe anyone involved with its creation went into it with an ounce of passion, outside of the desire to make some cash, much like Love Beach. But at least Love Beach was funny and somewhat self-aware; this is just pathetic.

I'm sorry. I suppose I should start to actually review this album by now. Well, in my review of Emerson, Lake & Powell I was trying really hard to avoid the term 'arena rock' because I thought that was a little too unfairly insulting, but this album compiles all of the worst aspects of generic arena rock. Whereas Emerson, Lake & Powell put the keyboards up front and had almost no guitar at all, this album puts Emerson completely in the background the whole time and instead drowns everything in hair metal-ish guitarwork. And not good guitarwork either. Just a load of primitive power chords to distract you from the complete absence of any worthwhile melodies, harmonies or rhythms. Then of course you alter the drum sound and make sure to remove any and all syncopation in the beats in order to make them sound like they were entered into a shitty drum machine, and finally, you make up for the loss of one of rock music's most unique and expressive voices by replacing him with a run-of-the-mill sleazebag who sounds like everyone else in the power pop business. Except it's even worse than that because Robert Berry turns out to not even be cut out for that job. On the 'rocking' tracks he sounds really faint and insecure, while on ballads such as the atrocious "You Do Or You Don't", he just sounds like he's bored of the whole affair. There is only one song on this album that doesn't entirely fit the above description, namely the aforementioned multi-part suite, entitled Desde La Vida. While it's still produced horribly, I can't deny that there's at least an attempt to create something with a "Tarkus" vibe here, at least on the "Frontera" section. But the most intense portion of it only lasts for a couple of seconds before the band lapses into autopilot, and then eventually the arena pop sets back in on "Sangre De Toro". I mean, fair is fair, it does have a surprising little free-form piano solo at some point too but that hardly makes up for everything else.

I can honestly think of very little else to say here because none of the other songs even merit individual discussion. All I'll say is that "Chains" sounds like a poor man's version of Bon Jovi's "You Give Love A Bad Name" (which already ranks among the most annoying songs I know) and "On My Way Home" makes me envision being stuck in the middle of a drunken crowd singing along to its inane chorus in a football stadium; to discover that the writing of such a piece of first-degree garbage was credited solely to the great Keith Emerson is almost heartbreaking. Well, this is just getting depressing now so I'm putting an end to this. Under no circumstances listen to this whole album in one sitting if you're keen on retaining your sanity.