BLACK MOON

I have recently followed "Emerson, Lake & Palmer's" career and most of their material hav yet been absolutely lovely to listen to. The last record I reviewed was Emerson, Lake & Powell from 1985 with a totally different drummer. This time I will write about "Black Moon" from 1992 with the proper line up. Twenty two years ago ELP made their second last record. The cover of this record shows a carousel whirling around. I wouldn't say it is especially interesting to look at. Unfortunately the music isn't very interesting either. Some songs have decent themes and enjoyable melodies. Though is the whole experience negative of this record.

As usual, Carl Palmer drums, but the rhytms are quite usual and Keith Emerson doesn't make his best works on the keyboard. Neither does Greg Lake with his voice, it hasn't the same edge as before.

I like some of the songs: "Black Moon" initiates the album with a typical quite rocky ELP' song (6/10). "Romeo and Juliet" has something interesting in it, well it's a lovely melody but ELP here doesn't make anything extraordinary with the classical piece as with "Pictures at an exhibition"(6/10) and "Farewell to arms" and "Burning Bridges" have beautiful vocals and some of the holy feeling the band has proved before (7/10). The other songs, unfortunately aren't so special that I want to write about them. Sometimes it just feels like that the listening time is too long. As a whole this album doesn't work well. This was absolutely not the same band that produced so magic music twenty years earlier. Two stars!