THE POWER TO BELIEVE

The Power To Believe is the best studio album of the last 20 years, closely followed by Thrak, dated 1995. The Fantastic thing about King Crimson has always been their way to explore new musical boundaries, and this album is some of the best achievement in that particular sense. Let's get to the songs:

The Power To Believe I : A Cappella 44 very poetic seconds of A. Belew 's voice filtered trough a vocoder.

Level Five The second track is an awesome instrumental, very powerful, and a perfect demonstration of KC components harmony between them and technical skills, and of course, of a MONSTRUOSE capability to play the same parts together with an inhuman precision, not to mention the complex tempo signature troughout this piece of music.

Eyes Wide Open An Adrian Belew ballad, in which is quite heavy the Beatles influence, just like "Walking On Air" from Thrak; very well produced and very enjoyable, perfectly played as usual,

Elektrik Unfortunately, probably, this is the only weak point of The Power To Believe...in fact this track is quite boring,and personally I found hard to listen to it all.

Facts Of Life: Intro A link track, no particular notes.

Facts Of Life A perfect example of the brand new King Crimson sound, the one which some people tend to associate to nu metal. or prog metal: which is totally wrong; it could be defined close to it, but not as much: in fact it's an evident demonstration of how a prog band, belonging to the art rock section, can sound powerful and angry and even violent, without being metal at all.

The Power To Believe II A good instrumental track, with no particular notes, simply great.

Dangerous Curves This track could be considered the modern version of "The Talking Drum": an instrumental piece which is a constant crescendo, and ends up with a huge chaotic final chord: very intense and probably one of the finest King Crimson instrumental pieces ever.

Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With Similar to Facts Of Life, but probably better, very violent, impressive and perfectly played; particular note for Belew sarcastic lyrics: a song lyrics about how to write a song.

The Power To Believe III Basically a Fripp soundscape, accompained by Mastellotto impressive drums; this track follows a structure very similar to "The Deception Of The Thrush" an instrumental track from the ProjeKct era, in fact it follows the same dynamics; a very good piece.

The Power To Believe IV : Coda A very spiritual Fripp's Soundscape, incredibly intense, a GREAT track.

In the end The Power To Believe is an excellent King Crimson album and useful to discover a brand new kind of progressive music. A very very original work.

4.5 stars: an excellent addition to any prog music collection, which is very close to be a masterpiece.