BRAIN SALAD SURGERY

Brain Salad Surgery is a borderline decent album in my opinion. ELP are definitely very talented and well respected musicians, but this is the album where they started to become ultra-pretentious. After the opening, "Jerusalem", I pretty much knew what was expected. It's a very imperial sounding opening, but not much more. "Toccata" is a loosely classical-inspired jumble of loosely organized noise. I always found this to be abrasive and unimportant. "Benny the Bouncer" is blues-ragtime goofery and only serves as being completely annoying.

But then the record starts to get much better, but not great. "Karn Evil 9" as a whole features tight musicianship as you'd expect from such a band and ELP. There are some fantastic catchy moments here, but they are few and few between some purposeless and random instrumental passages that don't fit at all. Pretentious at its core, but still progressive with undeniably great musicianship. Most people seem to enjoy this, but I definitely don't. This one if for hardcore ELP fans only, in my opinion.