The
debut album by the newly formed and highly ambitious power trio of
Keith Emerson, recently breaking up his prior band The Nice; Greg Lake,
bassist and former lead singer of the first iteration of King Crimson;
and drummer extraordinaire Carl Palmer from Atomic Rooster and The Crazy
World of Arthur Brown. Although intended to have a unified approach,
the album consists mainly of solo pieces, albeit mostly dominated by
Emerson. Still, this is one of the best albums of the early prog-rock
era.
The group is already showing its inclination for excess even
this early in the game; however, the music strives for mood instead of
outright bombast (although we get a bit of bombast in a couple of
places). Indeed, the album has a subtle goth feel to the proceedings.
Emerson brings two classical adaptations to the table: "The Barbarian"
is from Bela Bartok's Allegro Barbaro; and "Knife Edge", easily the most
bombastic track on the album, is based on Leos Janacek's Sinfonetta
(with a Bach quote in the subdued part just before the final verse of
the song). Pieces of Janacek's Sinfonetta were used in the early days of
The Nice's live set. "The Three Fates" is completely an Emerson
composition with the Royal Festival Hall organ. "Tank" is a Palmer drum
solo but also features Emerson's synthesizer made to sound like a
harpsichord. Lake contributes the subtlely jazzy "Take a Pebble" with a
lot of Emerson piano, and "Lucky Man", a folk ballad that would be the
group's first hit.
The group is still a bit formative at this
stage but already playing to its strengths and playing them well,
displaying depth and complexity in abundance yet not quite as dense as
the bands they came from. It would be a year or two before they would
fully gel as a band; however, they emerge out of the gate as one of the
top prog-rock bands of the early 70s.