The Power To Believe

No doubt the best post-Red Crimson album. For now anyway. Who knows what the current 3 drummer beast has in store for the future. Discipline is great, classic, but this is just a whole other level, folks. I loved it the first time I heard it. It delivers the promise of all the Thrak and onward versions of KC. Thrak was kind of... dumb. It's okay I suppose. What they started trying to do there is finally realized here. TCoL was pretty weak, mostly due to poor lyrics and even poorer production choices (a rarity for KC). TCoL sounds aseptic - harsh digital, sanitized... I don't know how to describe it. It really rubs me the wrong way. It's kind of a disaster in my opinion. All of that changes with Power to Believe though. This album is much more organic than TCoL. Much more open, many more acoustic drums in and amongst the ever-present e-drums. Or if what I'm mistaking for acoustic is actually digital, the tech finally caught up with the ear. Or maybe my ear finally is worn the hell out haha. Anyway...It's kind of silly for me to try to describe this music. Equal parts beautiful, virtuosic, and brutal. There are still lingering oversteps by Pat and some of the e-drum sonic choices, but these are minor disturbances for me. Many classics on this one - Level 5 (basically Larks part 5), Eyes Wide Open, Elektrik (the way this song builds is just incredible), Facts of Life (here and there you get KC cutting loose on pure funky riff rock - albeit short lived of course!), Dangerous Curves (I'll never forget seeing them play this live a few years before this came out on the Level Five tour - chills). It goes on and on. Jus a fantastic album.Make no mistake though, this is some pretty dense stuff. Not for your average listener. Probably not even for your average KC listener. This ain't In the Court, it ain't Discipline, it ain't Larks. It's like the sonic evolution of Red + Discipline, all dialed up to 11. Maybe wait for some time when the wife / girlfriend / kids are away, put it on a good system, and really crank it up. Monumental, and highly recommended.

I gave this line-up a miss for many years. How could an American King Crimson be any good? I had been a fan since '72. I had seen a stop ( the ill-fated "Fripp's a prima donna" stop in Denver with ZZ Top headlining) on the '74 "Road to Red" tour. I enjoyed the '81 to '84 line up but really didn't move me the way the earlier Crimson had. I got a bit curious after seeing the Chicago stop on the 2019 tour. I also had RADICAL ACTION, CHICAGO 2017, and MELTDOWN IN MEXICO. The LEVEL FIVE tune was fascinating. I had an appetite for more King Crimson so I purchased Elektrik. Boy was I wrong wrong wrong. Someone here on Amazon regarded THE POWER TO BELIEVE as good as LARKS TONGUES IN ASPIC. Well I concur, this is an EXCELLENT King Crimson release! So happy I purchased it!

This may be the best Crimson album since the remarkable "Red" of the mid-70's. KC has formed, and disbanded so many times, but always under the leadership and direction of guitarist Robert Fripp, who gives the band its intellectual, progressive vision. They often are trying out new ideas, new instruments, and such is the case here again, with "Power to Believe". One never knows quite what to expect from Crimso, and I guess occasionally fans have been disappointed, what with all the changes, but I do not believe one can deny that this is a remarkable album! I found it heady, intense, exciting all along, and of course unusual; it fits beautifully into the King Crimson pantheon. The only change I would have made would have been to reverse the outside (cover) art with the inside work, for the latter gives us reason to hope, but the former, despair.

In an article for The All Music Guide, Bruce Eder suggests that King Crimson is one of the Progressive Rock bands from the late 60s which, by the 80s and 90s had dramatically changed its approach to music-making in such a way that they alienated their first most ardent listeners: "[they] altered their sound so radically as to become unrecognizable to their original fans." However "The Power to Believe" suggests that this is simply untrue. The recording is actually very similar in terms of composition, style and execution to 1973's "Larks' Tongues in Aspic".In the past, Robert Fripp has expressed mistrust of the studio-recorded album. He sees Crimson primarily as a live band and is himself an advocate of experiencing music live first and foremost as both a performer and a listener. Perhaps then we can assume that any studio recording by Crimson is a creative compromise. What's extraordinary about both Fripp and the Crimson juggernaut though is - unlike their prog-rock contemporaries - how consistently high the quality of their recorded output has been over an extended period of time.In his book on Fripp, Eric Tamm best sums up the King Crimson sound as "what happens when [Bela] Bartok meets Hendrix". What he means by this is the unique way that Crimson combines the calculated, highly cerebral elements of the best 20th-century composers with the intuitive rawness of the best that rock music has to offer. The result is not something that will be liked by every listener but Fripp has never sought to be less than demanding.There are moments on the recording that have such rawness of power: "Level Five", "Facts of Life" but there are also moments of great beauty and lyricism too: "Eyes Wide Open" and "The Power to Believe II". "The Power to Believe" is not for everyone but thank the LORD that a cluster of musicians are still producing music that is dynamic, arresting, beautiful and forward-thinking in this current day and age.

This is a great album and will no doubt become a classic in years to come. Brilliantly produced and contains a great set of tracks. King Crimson can go from a whisper to thunder in a split second and that is the beauty of this album. An essential purchase!

Bought this without listening to it because I really like King Crimson in all of their formats but this one was not for me I'm afraid. Of course music is all about personal tastes. Over time I have deleted most of the tracks from my playlist.To me the songs felt a little as though the band had sat down with a number of songs to write rather than having the music bursting to get out. Can't believe I'm saying it but, a little non-descript at times.As I say though, it very much personal choice, I suggest you listen to it before buying if you can.

Released in 2003, KC's `The Power to Believe' features the same Fripp-Belew-Gunn-Mastelotto quartet as its immediate predecessor `The Construkction of Light'. Here the band plays with a conviction and mastery of its material not quite achieved since the mid-70s Wetton-Cross period.The musical forms are concise and exacting in structure and yet allow for intelligent improvisations, with plenty of light and shade. These guys are not just good, they're REALLY good. The foursome gels perfectly and obviously enjoys playing together.It can take several listens before this music starts to make sense, so persist. Soft melodious mood pieces alternate raunchy, full-throttle KC-rock with the sound `turned ap to eeleven' to shake the window frames, jumping around between different time signatures and keys and yet all making perfect sense. `Dangerous Curves' is one of the band's most powerful and energetic pieces, and Adrian Belew continues to write with finely observed critical wit about the modern social landscape (especially on `Happy with what you have to be happy with').Good to see that after 40 years the KC project is still ahead of the game and making such great music, preserving an inventiveness and originality rarely heard elsewhere.

A CD full of Crimson at play. Level Five a.k.a. Larks’ Tongues In Aspic Part Five is the standout track.

Following the over-heavy mess of Construksion of Light, this is KC at their absolute pinnacle. A themed album held perfectly in place by it's theme - including some ridiculously heavy songs, but it fits and it works. Probably not paralleled since Larks Tongues in Aspic. Perfection, but when you've been Crimlbed, you know what that means!