IN THE HOT SEAT

Since 1978's insipid "Love Beach", which ended up wearing out and distancing the members of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, the trio did not manage to pull themselves together and replicate in the studio the structures or developments that would bring them even partially close to the compositional and instrumental quality of their fundamental works from the first third of the 70's. And unfortunately without much enthusiasm, E,L&P concluded their studio adventure with the faded "In the Hot Seat" (1994), their ninth album.

It is a difficult task to rescue some tracks, perhaps fragments of "Hand of Truht" with a few crumbs of all the magic that Keith Emerson was capable of extracting from the synthesizers, and perhaps also the painful emotionality of "Daddy", but not much more. An album that navigates aimlessly between a combination of industrialised synth pop ("One by One", "Man In The Long Black Coat", "Street War"), with syrupy and insubstantial eighties ballads ("Heart on Ice", "Give Me A Reason To Stay"'), and sinks straight into melodic intrascendence ("Thin Line", "Change"', "Gone Too Soon").

The addition as a bonus track of the very good studio version of "Pictures At An Exhibition" of more than 15 minutes, is not enough to save the general mood of an album that does very little for the history of the legendary trio.

"In the Hot Seat" is an expendable work of the genre, and whose consolation may be that at least its cover is better than that of "Love Beach"...

1.5/2 stars