RED

Hiding behind a not very good cover design is one of the grandest prog albums ever created. This, the heaviest King Crimson album of all, marked the end of this period of the band. Robert Fripp actually suffered some sort of mental breakdown while recording this album (in interviews, he described it as "the top of my head blew off"), and the pain actually elevates the music to another level. While Fripp's guitar rips through each composition, Bruford and Wetton play as amazingly as I have ever hear either play (and I have more than a few album of each).

The vocal songs, Fallen Angel, One More Red Nightmare and Starless still rank as my favorites of all Crimson songs with vocals, and Wetton's bull moose voice actually sounds good on each of these. Red, song that Fripp like enough to play in later KC groups, is also one that I've heard covered by more different bands than any other of their compositions (The version by Either/Orchestra is worth searching for). and Providence is still one of the best improvs by this band (although the longer edit of it is still preferable).

One thing to note: shortly after this album was released was when Fripp committed the unforgivable sin of announcing that the seventies crew of prog bands were "dinosaurs", giving the music journalism toadies fodder for their tirades against the genre in favor of the simplistic pap that they could more easily understand.

Despite that, this album is still a work of brilliance.