STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK

This is a tough album foir me to critique in that it has a few great songs on it, "The Great Deciever", "Lament", and especially "The Night Watch" are all top notch however the Crimson just seem to miss the mark on the instrumentals. Some of them take a little too long to develop in my opinion. The title track is a perfect example of this taking almost five minutes to really kick into anything that one can actually recognize. The musicianship as always is top notch and the riff in "The Great Deciever" is very cool as is the drumming in "Lament". These guys were consistently trying to push the envelope and for that this is an excellent addition to anyones prog collection but not the first Crimson album to start with. From this version of the band "Red" is still the best of their three releases.