EMERSON LAKE & PALMER

This is the weakest of the four essential ELP albums (trilogy, tarkus, and BSS being the other three). The Barbarian is one of the best tracks on the album and is a great album opener. It is pretty heavy for an ELP song and features more distorted guitar than most ELP songs. It is instumental and goes from a heavy rock section to a piano interlude that builds up to an explosion where the guitar re-enters in terrifying fashion. Great stuff. Basically the other good songs, to me, are Knife-edge and Lucky Man; and of course everyone has heard the latter song about a million times on any classic rock station. Lucky Man, even though a good song, is not representative of what ELP are all about. Now, onto the bad parts. Take a Pebble never really gets going, and is just so slow, especially in the middle section. This song sounds nothing like ELP's other work and sounds like they were still trying to find their signature sound; this definitely was not it. Also, the lyrics to this song kill me, in a bad way ("disturbing the waters... of our lives"). Last, and definitely least are two instrumentals that are uneven and boring. The Three Fates doesn't turn into something exciting until the last section and even then it is nothing special. Tank sounds strange, I can't really explain it exactly, but again I think that ELP were still trying to find their sound and this was yet another failed attempt.

In conclusion, the three shortest songs on the album are the best ones in my opinion and that makes up only about fifteen minutes of the album. The other three tracks are slow, boring, and do not sound like anything from their other definitive albums. In my opinion, this is an o.k. start for a "supergroup." I would say that it is definitely not an essential album; I would download The Barbarian, Knife-Edge, and Lucky Man and call it a day.