THE POWER TO BELIEVE

And in such a high style too. This album sounds very modern, industrial and all around fitting for the times. Their second album of the new millennium, they already had the formula down for releasing their style of music into the mainstream (with "ConstruKction of Light"), and here on "The Power To Believe" all they did was tighten the nuts and bolts on their formula, and look at the results in produced! With two different styles of playing coming from Belew and Fripp, not to mention the youthful energy of Trey Gunn plucking away on the Warr guitar and Pat's technical yet heavy drumming, the album is an intense mish-mash of sounds right from the start.

After the short acapella start to the album, the heavy guitar grinding starts up almost instantly with "Level Five". The lead guitar trades are always intense and the riffs are beyond comparison in the age of emo-rock. "Eyes Wide Open" is almost the mirror image of "Level Five" in the fact that it is very mellow and moody with some awesome vocals from Mr. Belew. "Elektrik" is one of my favorite instrumentals from King Crimson, post-Discipline. Even though it is incredibly hard to track down the song, meaning that the tempos are everywhere and the rhythms fling around between instruments, it is highly energetic and worth everybody's time. This flows into the intro for "Facts Of Life", which kicks off the hard-rock tune that the "Court of the Crimson King" fans love to hate. I love the driving, intense riffs, but Belew's vocals seem awkwardly strained for some reason. The vocals are very unappealing to a casual listener. A mix of ambient experiments and techno beats glide through for a few minutes until the gem of the album pops up, and that song is "Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With", which ironically enough is a song about writing a rock n' roll song. The riffs are in your face and the lyrics actually make sense. The drumming is an absolute force as well. The rest of the album is an instrumental gallery of musical atmospheres and landscapes, which are absolutely amazing. Words don't even describe the beauty of some of these tracks.

This album, "The Power To Believe", just shows the progressive rock community that King Crimson will never stop adapting and rocking out to their surroundings. Their late 2007-early 2008 release will be something to camp out for if it even barely resembles this genius effort of blending ambient/experimental sounds with "in your face" hard rock.

4.5 stars, no doubt!

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