Album Review: Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Album: Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Artist: Album: Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Label: Island
Release Date: October 1970

Perhaps one of  the most classically influenced progressive rock releases, Emerson, Lake and Palmer's self titled first album begins with a rock arrangement of Bela Bartok's 1911 piano piece "Allegro Barbaro" with an abundance of hammond organ and overall flair. 'The Barbarian' as they call it immediately shows the intentions and direction of the band as a whole. Without any lyrics it still manages to captivate and entertain, which is an extremely important feature of instrumental progressive rock; there's no laziness or boredom.

'Take a Pebble' has a deep King Crimson feel to it at the beginning, which is unsurprising considering that it was written by Lake, the original bassist and vocalist of King Crimson. Following the vocal section there's folk guitar set atop watery sound effects, followed by a jazz piano section. At twelve minutes, this is the longest song on the album, and until the full band joins the piano at around 9 minutes, it can feel somewhat empty yet not unlike instrumental sections of King Crimson songs.

'Knife-Edge' is another classically inspired piece given the prog. rock treatment. Based on a Leoš Janáček’ piece with a great quotation from a Bach suite on organ in the middle of the piece, the lyrical sections are kept brief and the song itself is much like 'The Barbarian' in length in that it rocks hard for the short time that it plays.

'The Three Fates' features three prominent sections; the first for organ, the second for solo piano and the third for piano trio. Again it takes a particularly jazzy feel, mixed with classical elements and is the only track on the album not to feature drums or bass. As a result it feels a little out of place on the album and more like something off their subsequent "works" albums which featured solo compositions as well as band pieces.

'Tank' is a strange inclusion in a lot of ways, although not fully a drum solo piece (there's some clavichord at the beginning), the middle of the track features Palmer performing a drum solo. This sort of thing is usually restricted to live albums, and although the beginning and end of the track almost make up for the middle, with their instrumental additions to the piece, there's no escaping the fact that it's built around the solo.

'Lucky Man' is the only real conventional song on the entire album, the first song written by Greg Lake, aged 12. It wasn't received well by his band mates, and was only recorded to fill time at the end of the album. The song isn't particularly bad, but it feels as out of place on the album as it's Moog solo does on the track.

On the whole, the band are at their best when they're wreaking havoc on a classical tune in their own rock style. 'The Barbarian' and 'Knife-Edge' are both short pieces which demonstrate the band's skill at this. The more solo based pieces such as 'The Three Fates' and 'Tank' are musically interesting, yet lack the pace and dynamic feel of the other tracks. For a first album, there's a lot to take in and most of it is good.

Rating: 3.75/5.00