TRILOGY

It starts off with one of my favorite ELP songs, The Endless Enigma mini-suite. The piano/percussion intro is a bit overlong, but it more than makes up for it with its beautiful melody and great keyboard work. Fugue is instrumental, but one of the better 'piano-only' instrumentals from ELP. It concludes with Part 2, which is short and sweet. Awesome. Then comes From the Beginning. At first I hated this song, now its just kind of meh. Not horrible, but not great, and definately the worst of Lake's early ballads (Lucky Man, Take a Pebble, Still... you turn me on). The main problem is this terrible main riff which reminds me of the Beach Boys or something. The main melody is not bad though. The Sherrif is the usual slightly goofy song, I think with songs like this and Jeremy Bender they were trying to be Beatles-esque, they remind of them a little bit. However, this song lacks the pleasant laidback melody of Jeremy bender, but it isn't super goffy like Benny the Bouncer, nor does it share its terrible vocal style. Another not great song from this album. Then comes Hoedown. I'm sure you've heard this song, its in all kinds of movies. I like this rendition, it features some of Emerson's best organ, plus it isn't overlong.

The album continues with Trilogy, a bit of a weird song. It starts off with a nice piano accompanied melody with great vocals. Then the song goes into a cool synth section, and features a pretty cool melody with some weird vocals. Again, not as good as everyone says (in my opinion), but not a bad song by any means. Then comes Living sin. This song could have been awesome. I mean wicked awesome. But Greg Lake, who is one of my favorite vocalists, whose voice I never would have though could be a reason for a song to be bad, ruins the song. He sings in this semi-goofy, semi-scary low-pitched voice much of the time. Actually, he doesn't sing, he sort of talks. However, when he sings normally in the song its awesome, driven forward by the great organ riffs of Emerson. The album closes with the instrumental Abbadon's Bolero, which is pretty good, although it seems to drag on for a bit. Great synthing though. The synth melody is good, but it is a little repetitive. Not bad though.

So this album is pretty good, not as great as everyone says (in my opinion), and the worst of ELP's early and best albums, behind (tarkus, ELP, BSS, and Pictures at an Exhibition, in order of worst to best.) Actually, it may be tied with Tarkus, although neither album is actually bad. Highlights include The Endless Enigma 1/Fugue/Endless Enigma 2, Hoedown, and Trilogy. 3.5 stars, rounded up to four.

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