IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON

In the Wake of Poseidon is King Crimson's second album, and the last album to feature Greg Lake on Vocals. As it has been mentioned in many a review, In the Wake of Poseidon is sort of In the Court of the Crimson Kings' ugly stepsister. It has a similar sound and feel as ITCOTCK but it is not nearly as good as the original.

Tracks 1, 5, and 8 all have Peace in the title. The first track, Peace-A Beginning and the last track Peace-An End are kind of Greg Lake singing/reading poetry with a very quiet guitar in the background. The 5th track Peace-A Theme is a very quiet instrumental track that has the sound of the background music of the other Peace songs. I really am not sure what the point of these tracks are. It would seem that it is meant to make this album a concept album, but if it is a concept album, I don't know what the concept is.

Track 2 Pictures of a City is a nice rocking song with good vocals from Greg Lake, and some great instrumental work by the Giles and Mr. Fripp. This is definitely the highlight of this album.

Track 3 Cadence and Cascade is a mellow track with Gordon Haskell making his debut on vocals. My thinking is that the song is about a menage a trois with two women Cadence and Cascade and a man who they meet in the first part of the song, and then they expect to meet for future trysts but he doesn't show. That is at least my impression of the lyrics.

Track 4 In the Wake of Poseidon, is the title track, and is the second best song on this album. Very good mellotron, drums, and guitar work on this song. There is a similar feel to this song and In the Court of the Crimson King from the debut album.

Track 6 Cat Food-from my reading this was the single from this album. It is a rocking track with throwaway lyrics. I think that this song would be used by Greg Lake as a blueprint for the many throwaway lyric songs that would show up on Emerson Lake and Palmer releases such as Jeremy Bender and Benny the Bouncer.

Track 7 The Devil's Triangle-it is my understanding that this song uses Mars, Bringer of War by Gustav Holst as its "inspiration". I think that this song represents a lot of what would become the future improvisational sound of the 90's and 00's, which I am not to fond of. To my untrained ear, there is some decent drum work at times on this song, but for the most part to me this sounds like what would result from putting a group of monkeys in a room with some instruments and letting them have at. It is not so much a song as it is various instruments being hit at random to make noise.

Although my review is somewhat harsh on some of these songs I think that this is a good album, but just non an essential album. If you are looking to start collecting King Crimson albums but not chronologically, then I would save this album until the end.