THE RETURN OF THE MANTICORE

This collection is not bad for a career retrospective boxed set. And at least it came out before the atrocious In The Hot Seat. This set contains just about every sing I would have used, and a few that I suppose they had to include. The only real fault is the lack of good unreleased tracks.

The first disk begins with a new recording of Touch And Go, the single from the Emerson Lake & Powell album. The next three tracks are ELP playing a song from each member's previous band, The Nice, King Crimson and Atomic Rooster. These songs are okay, but it's very disappointing that they chose to not play the amazing instrumental section of 21st Century Schizoid Man.

The remixes on this collection sound great. And I like that they chose to include multipart epics like Tarkus and Karn Evil 9 as single tracks, making them easier to play in entirety on my MP3 player.