IN THE WAKE OF POSEIDON

After shaking the ground with their debut, Fripp apparently ran out of ideas or was feeling insecure if he and Sinfield could make something better or more different and then this album totally inspired by its predecessor came out. It is good, in fact very good, but it doesn't contain the same magic as Court. What we have here are somel songs that are mirror versions of the past ones and some few new numbers that fail to be too remarkable (Cat Food again? No thanks...).

The first track that reminds a bunch of "21st...", don't you think? Even the middle part is identical. In my opinion this is a very dry song that doesn't captivate me a bit. It seems that they didn't want to think too much on the production of this track - they could have made a jazzy number but with similar riffs surfacing the track and screaming lack of creativity or simply laziness. Things get better on an acoustic number called "Cadence and Cascade", which in my opinion doesn't remind me too much of "I Talk to the Wind" - there's not even flutes on here. This is the first appearance of Haskell on vocals, and he doesn't disappoint! He will lead the vocals on their next album and then become one of the most underrated people on music...come on the guy sings much better than Boz or Wetton, i sometimes like him more than Adrian Belew! Well, Greg Lake is still the master of the voice, though, and it is showed on the title track, that reminds me a bit of "Epitaph". It is a beautiful song with a beautiful intro, but the fact that it becomes drum-lead during the middle (notice the way the drums are played as a main instrument, it doesn't fit one bit with the song) breaks the magic a bit. "Devil's Triangle" is an interesting track but i don't know why they repeated the choirs from the last album's title track at the ending since it sounds awful but the rest of the song is indeed very interesting and shows that the band is great even on classical music (as they are on jazz, pop, rock, etc). The "Peace" themes give the album a FLOYDian cyclic effect, but i only like the second Peace song since the others reveal an annoying side of Greg's voice that i only found here. The acapellas sound awful, but the guitar interlude is very neat. "Cat Food" is a bit boring, and it is one of those songs that i rarely refuse to press the skip button.

Overall this is a good album but nothing special. Fortunately Lizard will arrive soon to show that they didn't depend of the debut to be great, in fact they got even better as their epic of same name with a rare appearance by JON ANDERSON will show.

3.5 stars