TRILOGY

At least they should call the group. "Emerson, with Lake and Palmer". Even that would not be totally accurate, such is the keyboard player's domination of the sound of the group, but since Lake does co-write a lot of the material, he would qualify as a mostly "silent partner", his voice notwithstanding.

This skewed nature of the trilogy would not matter if there was a good deal of enjoyable music to be found herein, but instead we are subject to an ego fest of some of the cheesiest organ and moog sounds to come out in any era, mostly devoid of development, melody and subtlety. Yes I suppose the playing is technically good if emotionally barren. Then there is the fixation with the American wild west, like three British schoolboys would be able to provide us some insight here. Luckily it is laughable.

"The Endless Enigma" and "From the Beginning" show us the capabilities of the group and where they may have gone if not seemingly stuck in pomposity overdrive. The showboating started earlier for ELP than most of the big prog bands and foretold their greater relative decline in respect in the prog community.