DISCIPLINE

Discipline indeed marked a radical change in King Crimson's history; from this album onwards you could easily call it a new band, since it really was meant to be a new one. The original Crimsonian sound was gone, no mellotrons, no jazzy leanings, few rock substance, and other dozen of things that made the 70's Crimson so characteristic, despite its differences with each line-up, had also disappeared.

The 80's King Crimson were a totally new breed, as music progressed and moved on from the 70's pompous stuff, so did Fripp, so you can find Discipline to be akin to some of the new wave stuff of the time. However, as you all know, Robert Fripp has always been a unique songwriter, so Discipline is also one-of-a- kind like Larks' Tongue in Aspic and In the Court of the Crimson King were in their time, and still are for today.

Despite my general dislike at this album when I first listened to it, I always found something behind all its weirdness that made me come back to the album, finally after repeated listens, it clicked. Yes, it is weird, the guitars(yeah, two guitarists now) are played in an odd way and do not really sound like guitars, the drums are dynamic but 80's sounding so don't expect anything that sounds like what Bruford did in Red. I already knew Belew through Zappa, so his weirdness was tolerated by me, but now I consider his vocal performance throughout this album to be freaking fantastic and another key-factor making this sound like a totally new band.

The album is strong allthrough, so there's no need to mention any highlight, but I will mention my favorite tracks. These being Elephant Talk, perfect song to know what this band offers, bizarre vocals, some weird sounds, a complicated rhythm, and above all that it's catchy in its own odd way!, and Frame by Frame which has my favorite vocal performance by Belew.

Mind you, I'm not a big fan of this kind of freakiness, but King Crimson made it well and entertaining, and in Discipline it's pretty much superb. Definitely not an album I would categorize as classic Prog Rock, because it is not, but still this is original as hell and so fun to play that it deserves no less than 4 stars and I recommend it to any fan of the 80's new wave/post-punk kind of stuff and to anyone who is keen in listening to some wild, eighties-sounding, yet accessible for some, bizarreness that is so much fun!

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