Being one of the founding pieces of music for prog rock, King Crimson's debut work is great. The elements of the genre are already fully laid out and well done here, including the usual long interludes and instrumentals, experimental instrumentation (shoutout to the mellotron), and only having 5 tracks. The aspects of the album that I want to highlight here are Peter Sinfield's lyrics and Greg Lake's vocals, which are both absolutely phenomenal and go together amazingly well, being the perfect encapsulation of a haunting and wistful spirit that I love. They're what give the album its identity and strengthen all the underlying elements. For the most part this album is just a really strong showing of why I love prog rock. Every element is on point and everything works so well together. Although, I would be remissed to not mention my biggest problem with the album, Moonchild. The 12 minute long song is really just a 2 minute long song followed by very abstract and sporadic improv from the band for the remaining 10 minutes. I usually love this sort of tangent, especially in prog, but it just feels like filler here, with there not being any coordination or composition to it for most of the section's length (if I wanted to get really cynical about it, I would mention how it just sounds like random notes played one at a time by random instruments, but I don't think that that's entirely fair of me so it's this afterthought of a run-on sentence instead). But even though that was a sizable chunk of the review, I hope it doesn't take up too much space in your head of what the album is or my opinion of it. The overall of the album is very good and gets a very strong rating from me, being just shy of getting into the next number score up. If you haven't given this album a listen yet, then uh, you probably should.
Highlights: 21st Century Schizoid Man, I Talk to the Wind, The Court of the Crimson King.
Rating: 5/6
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