BRAIN SALAD SURGERY

Sorry for saying this folks, but i don't see how this album can be considered a masterpiece by so many people. For me, a masterpiece is something that is top quality from begining to end, and this album again suffers from ELP's traditional lack of consistence problem - there's two very dry and plain prog numbers, one horrid pop song, then an annoying fuzzy track all of them directing to a thirty-minute pretentious "epic" showing what ELP does best: instrumental show off, totally lacking of emotion and passion just to prove how awesome they are playing their instruments very fastly. In fact, after seeing the "Pictures in Exhibition" video and feeling embarassed after seeing Emerson jumping over his keyboards i lost the respect for the band considerably. Is all that show off necessary? Do they really need to keep proving that they are great musicians on their respective instruments? Emerson is the one that likes to show himself more. Lake is a great vocalist and is apparently the more feet on Earth of the trio. There's no question about how good Palmer is on drums, but i personally prefer Nick MASON's melodic and simple drumming, because it has much more soul on it - something none of ELP's members ever managed to put in their music: their soul, their emotions, there's no beautiful music, they only seem to try to prove that they can play their stuff well and fast.

That said, the main reason i listen to music is to be taken to unknown places on the several corners of my mind and feel moved on my heart by the melodies created. This is something ELP certainly does not do for me (where bands like PINK FLOYD, KING CRIMSON and CAMEL never fail to make me feel warm and impressed by the beauty of their compositions).

Sorry for being so harsh, but this album (and band) in my opinion are extremely overrated. I don't think a song like "Benny the Bouncer" can be ignored when giving this album five stars, neither i think bad lyrics like on "Still You Turn Me On" and an annoying thirty-minute piece like "Karn Evil 9" can be in any way enjoyable, but that's just my opinion.

Again, sorry for the perhaps unnecessary harshness contained in this review.

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