RED

The Career of the band King Crimson has known several style's, eclectic, experimental, jazzy. This album is one of the three metal albums, together with Larks' Tongues In Aspic and Starless and Bible black. I don't think these albums can be called metal, though they often are. The albums do have some heavily overdriven and distorted guitars, but I rather call it heavy prog. Red is made up of five different songs, most of them are pretty heavy.

Red: The first track on the album is an instrumental which is based around Robert Fripp's distorted guitar. The song has a catchy riff, and a slow, heavy solo. the song is pretty good, though it is a bit too much of the same, compared to other King Crimson guitar based instrumentals as Fracture, from the Starless and Bible Black album, this one isn't very strong, but still a nice opener of the album.

Fallen Angel: One of my favourites of the album. It's a ballad which starts with a violin intro and is mostly acoustic guitar driven. After a while Robert Fripp starts playing a very catchy, strong riff. The song is based around Wetton's vocals, but also has a jazzy interlude. One of the most beautiful heavy songs i've ever heard, definitely one of my favorites.

One More Red Nightmare: Just as the previous two songs, this one has a strong and catchy riff. The verses of this strong aren't really that strong, the lyrics don't really interrest me, though John Wetton has great vocals in this song (as always). The middle section of this song is kind of jazzy, compareable to the jazzy interlude of Fallen Angel.

Providence: By far the least good song of the album, it's an improvisation which can also be found on the live album The Great Deciever. The song opens with creepy violin and guitars, bass and drums will join the violin later in the song. I love the violin as an instrument, I also love the violin used by King Crimson in songs as Exiles, but I don't seem to like it in this song. The song lacks structure, and I know KC can give improvisations structure, several live album contain those.

Starless: The longest song of the album, and probably the best. it starts out with a overdriven guitar with tone turned down, so it has a very characteristic sound. The guitar in the intro is often replaced by violin in life performances. the vocal part of the song sounds pretty sad and the lyrics are nice, too. after a while, the calm part is over, the song turns into some sort of improvisation. Robert gives a way a guitar solo... of two different notes. The chaotic, instrumental Starless goes on for a few minutes and then the song is finished, just as the album.

39 minutes are pretty short, definitely for a great album as Red, I would have loved to hear some more songs of this King Crimson style. The final album of the 70's King Crimson is one of their best.