Out of the rarefied list of truly classic progressive rock bands, King Crimson stands as the thorniest of the lot. You can ask someone on the street to name a Genesis song and they should be able to oblige. A Yes song, maybe. King Crimson? Not hardly. And yet of those three names, it is Crimson that has had the heaviest impact on modern music, specifically metal. You can hear the threads of building, breaking down and then rebuilding a song in groups like Tool and Porcupine Tree. The sinister heaviness underneath Robert Fripp’s guitar constructions was a major component for the downtuned nu-metal of the late ’90s and early 2000s, even if Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi got most of the lip service. Even so, they never had a top 10 hit, which given Fripp’s somewhat contrarian nature, probably pleases him to no end.

Forty years after the debut of In the Court of the Crimson King, Fripp has embarked on an ambitious project to not only remaster the band’s catalog, but with the help of Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, create brand new surround sound mixes. Alongside the debut, the first wave also features the fan-polarizing Lizard and Red, the moment everything changed. Although the band had always dabbled in minor chords, free-jazz outbursts and improvisations, they always were tied to that rather flowery, poetic sense of prog rock that ticked off the regular rock fans mercilessly. Bowing in 1974, Red was a mean mother of a recording, the opening title track instrumental throbbing and stomping with the urgency of a runaway Caterpillar backhoe crashing through a glass cathedral. Joining in this power trio version of the band, John Wetton’s fuzzy, heavy bass does as much in trading lead lines as it does holding down the bottom end. Bill Bruford’s jazz-inflected sense of rhythm dives and weaves, but never gets in the way when it’s simply time to beat the hell out of the skins. (more…)