Customer Reviews

Thrak

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Robert Fripp doesn't look like a rock musician. He looks more like a parish vicar with his round face and rimless glasses. He doesn't talk like one either--we're all used to London Cockney or Liverpool Scouse from British rockers, but Fripp's dry, clipped tones are reminiscent of the late John Houseman. Then he picks up his Gibson Les Paul and the whole prissy facade collapses. What blasts forth from his amp is the muscular, blunt-force style the Les was built for. Jazziz magazine called King Crimson "thinking man's metal" on strength of this album. Crimson is back--all the way back. This is Crimson NOW, not "remember when". They've taken the minimalist approach they had in the '80s and combined it with the noir aspect they had earlier. "Vrooom", for example, owes a lot to the title instrumental from the "Red" album. The title track "Thrak" is a percussive track based on drums, like drummer Bill Bruford did years ago in Yes's "Five Percent For Nothing", only a lot more jarring. I mean, the whole band's going "SLAM-SLAM....SLAM-SLAM" along with his sledgehammer both-hands hits on the toms (I had the album on when my brother showed up and he went "ho-ly s#&t...!"). There's more than just a little John Lennon in "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream", with its seemingly-mindless title and I Am the Walrus-derived lyrics. Likewise in the way singer Adrian Belew imitates Lennon's vocal style in "I'm a Dinosaur", a boy-was-I-ever-dumb look back at the Baby Boom generation's love-and-peace trip (as well as a veiled laugh at themselves as a middle-aged band trying to "re-emerge"). They haven't gone all the way back to the late '60s Moody Blues on a bum trip thing--nobody plays keyboards--the bridge section in this song is done by Belew using a synth interface on his Fender Strat. There's even (would you believe?) a song with a backbeat; "People". Most other re-emergent bands seem to be like those old fire horses pathetically still responding to the bell. King Crimson comes out more mature each time.

After Three of a Perfect Pair, KC suffered its longest hiatus, over ten years. The comeback would have to be significant, and it certainly was. Thrak surpasses many of KC's previous works. The benefit of improved recording technology, plus conceptualization on CD scale and not a two-sided album, leave it among the very best of KCs works, not to mention longest. At 56 minutes, this is way more KC than we are used to (around 50% more).

KC revs up the motors with the rocking Vrooom, which leads to a Coda and descending musical figures that end in a bass rock blast.

Dinosaur quickly became one of my King Crimson favorites, pop in flavor but with a driving beat. Walking on Air is unabashedly gorgeous and atmospheric, a lovely ballad. B'Boom is essentially a drum solo, but very arresting and creative. Thrak is monster rock, rumbling and driven with some spaced out atmospherics.

Inner Garden is mysterious and menacing in tone, but lyrical and lilting. The pop-flavored People features great guitar and a driving beat. Radio I and II are short interludes of outer-space reverb and echo that frame One Time, yet another ballad that rivals Walking on Air for beauty and clarity. This set is brought to a close by a revisted Inner Garden.

We are treated to a third pop-flavored rocker, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream. Two more versions of the hard-rock Vroom bring this great disc to a close.

King Crimson works best if you listen to each new album without any expectations since no album sounds like any other. Change and experimentation have always been at the core of the group, and this CD is no different. Thrak is probably the most metal-sounding record they've done, even more than Red. "B'Boom" is like all the members of Stomp summed up by two drummers. "Dinosaur" is a song you could use to torture small children. "Walking on Air" is the spookiest slow song I've heard. "VROOOM" and "VROOOM VROOOM" (not to be confused) give us a loud shred-fest with all six members coming together and blending perfectly. It always amazes me. Long live the King.

The first thing I noticed about King Crimson's eleventh studio LP s is how surprisingly brutal, heavy and most of all inventive these rock granddads sound. It's astonishing to think how old these guys were when they came together for "Thrak"...you've got Robert Fripp - 49, Adrian Belew - 46, Tony Levin - 49, Trey Gunn - 35, Bill Bruford - 46 and Pat Mastelotto - 40. Supremely old in relation to the 90s rock scene - yet they sound more inspired, more fresh and inventive than 99% of the material being churned out at this time.

While "Thrak" is not considered a metal album, it is undoubtedly brutal and retains a "heavy" feel without ever cranking the guitar distortion. This is partly down to the "double trio" line-up consisting of two drummers (Bruford and Mastelotto), two bassists (Levin and Gunn) and two guitarists (Fripp and Belew). The resulting sound is immense. Just one listen to the bewildering "Vrooom" gives a sense of what "Thrak" is all about. Classic Fripp guitar melodies and riffs, complex, jazzy and intertwining drum patterns and thundering baselines. As I mentioned "Thrak" is not a metal album, but to me this sounds as (if not more) brooding, intense and relevant when compared to the majority of metal acts around today. Then there's "B'boom" and the title track, the former being a drummers heaven with a duet solo that builds to a bewildering, syncopated groove. This gives way to the scary onslaught of the title track - evolved around blasts of intense guitars and difficult rhythms, the song sounds more like modern metal gods Meshuggah than anything King Crimson has ever put out.

Amidst this mayhem, "Thrak" also showcases King Crimson at their classic rock best. "Dinosaur" sounds like 70s prog rock given a twisted revamp. The verse flows and eases, giving way to a booming chorus in which Belew croons "I'm a dinosaur, somebody's digging my bones". The song shows how KC fear being overtaken in the music world, and this would certainly explain the inventive and heavy sound elsewhere. "People" and "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream" are both funky rock numbers, fully equipped with off-beat grooves and catchy choruses. Both songs also continue a theme of social satire, of cynically stepping back and viewing the world, with "People" attacking our single-minded visions and lack of wider appreciation, and "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream" focusing on the mundane and pointless. "Walking on Air" and "One Time" showcase KC at their delicate best, two superb ballads that would fit right in with their classic 60s and 70s material.

"Thrak" sees a band of old-timers, of rock granddads, pushing their sound to incredible and unexpected new places. At times harsh and chaotic, sometimes downright heavy and brutal, "Thrak" is the band's most adventurous album. Of course, they always come back to their classic rock roots, and this really sets off "Thrak" as a wonderfully eclectic yet balanced album. Highly recommended.

This is my return also, to a band I hadn't listened to in a long time. "THRAK" is a good reintroduction, and proves that King Crimson is one of only a few bands that can successfully transform an older idiom--of symphonic rock, combining supreme technical ability with enigmatic lyrics--into a musical discourse still relevant today--one that does not overemphasize musical talent but places it in the context of a postmodern sensitivity, in all its violent fragmentation (listen to "VROOOM VROOOM: Coda," for instance). You may think this strange or inappropriate, but they are doing in their line of business (try to put a name on this kind of music) what Radiohead has done for pop, or Primus for metal. Even if King Crimson can't redo what they did in 1969 (and it's only in comparison to "In The Court of the Crimson King" that I give it four stars, not five), they prove their continued relevance, and have returned with an album worth listening to.

These musicians, as any KC lover knows, are the best, no doubt about it. I have always been infatuated with Bill Bruford's eccentric but solid mix of polyrhythm and steady 4/4 rock; who else can move so easily between jazz, fusion, rock, and pop? A personal favorite of mine is Adrian Belew, ever since I accidentally bought David Bowie's "Stage" years ago, thinking (at the age of 10...) his "Heroes" was the Stranglers' "No More Heroes." Belew didn't really impress me lyrically on his first solo albums, but his contributions to KC make sense to me now, more than twenty years later: maybe I should revisit the Lone Rhino.

From hard-rocking tunes such as "VROOOM" and "THRAK" to more pop-oriented songs like "Dinosaur," "People," and "Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream," this album has it all--lyrical imagination, great drum and bass work, and explosive and inventive guitarplaying. King Crimson is back on my shelf--I guess I'll run out and pick some of these live albums up soon.

The only thing my fellow reviewers seem to miss is the fact that this album has some great playing on it. Yes the songs can be sort of Beatle-esque, but as great as the Beatles were, they never experimented with metric modulation or stacked different time signitures. This album does owe a lot to "Red" and "Lark's Tongue," but also owes a lot to "Discipline." It is not a regression to the Crimson of the 70s, but a revisitation of the 70s through the concepts and sensibilities that the band developed in the 80s. If you listen hard, you can hear that Thrak is not a step backward, but a reconciliation of the Crimsons of the 70s and 80s with a 90s perspective. It is brilliant both instrumentally and musically; its a shame this incarnation of Crimson couldn't stick around a little longer.

This is one extraordinary record. Tracks like 'VROOOM' recall the 70s classic, RED. The gorgeous guitar solo on 'Walking on Air' is almost reminiscent of Hendrix, although rather more disciplined. And then we get the deliberately nostalgic chorus 'I'm a Dinosaur', recalling John Lennon's 'I am the Walrus'. 'Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream' is in the same vein.

Sometimes I feel Fripp gives his main songwriter too much freedom. In the 70s, it worked fine with John Wetton -- he came up with wonderful melodic tunes within the progressive genre and lyrics that kept away from the pretentious twaddle that Pete Sinfield wrote. But Adrian Belew dictates the whole direction of King Crimson, and for this album he'd either been over-indulging in 60s British pop or anticipating Oasis. But this is not to deny that Belew comes up with some fine tunes. (If left to their own devices, experience indicates that Fripp and Bruford are happiest bashing away at repetitive metal riffs as per the tracks 'VROOOM' and 'Red'.)

Fripp runs Crimson as a business now. His sleevenotes for 'The Night Watch' describe how aggrieved he was at the paltry salaries EG Management paid the band in the 60s and 70s. (It's possible that his wife Toyah Wilcox made more money in a couple of years out of a few singles and an album than he has out of a lifelong career in the business.) You just sense on this album that Fripp takes a managerial step back, lets Belew get on with it, and ensures that all the direct-mail and merchandising possibilities are taken care of.

This is not quite a career peak for Crimson. In my book you need to go back to LARK TONGUES and RED for that. But it's a highly welcome return to form.

Luis Mejia (son) - finally, after their second split, King Crimson comes with a bright new future in the 90's. Even when the album doesn't fit the new music crowning of punk and grunge, King Crimson took their time to do another set of arrengements, as they NEVER do an album the same like another one.

Returning being a double trio, the band's aspirations are notably changed through the album; even when they can still put slow rythms showing rudeness in songs like Walking On Air, One Time and Inner Garden, they notably stablished in a much more heavy, hard musical pattern, not changing their style, just, as I said before, making arrengements to their genre of progressive rock. the use of a mild orchestra in certain songs is also excellent. The musical composition is not as great as it's shown in past albums but incredible as well.

Even in the heaviest songs like Dinosaur, People, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream and almost every instrumental, it can be obviously noticed the effort they made to continue with cultural and complex sounds, notice that they were in their 49' or something like that. Levin and Gunn made a such incredible performances in this album, and thanks God they did demonstrate how they can perfectly adapt the Chapman stick even in the heaviest compositions. Belew's freaky voice is as good as ever, Fripp, well, I don't think he can make an awful guitar sound even if his life depended on it, and is a great start for Pat, too. The track B'Boom is an incredible track being their first percussion solo shows how the adding of new rythms and heavy improvisation has always characterized King Crimson.

Another aspect is that the album is not so accessible for casual listeners, because even I was shocked when I heard it. Heavy, soft, awkward, mature, perfect.

After 25+ years with Crimson, you'd think that Robert Fripp would have run out of musical ideas. This album, featuring the new "double trio" line-up, puts those worries to bed. The music is soaring, bombastic, angry, menacing, exploratory - just what you'd expect from these guys. They're true "musician's musicians".

Neither Crimson's best album nor my favorite, THRAK is nonetheless a daring collection of music, very much in the tradition that leads straight from 1972's LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC to 2000's THE CONSTRUKCTION OF LIGHT. Slabs of sound alternate with delicate melodic layering, synthetic soundscapes intertwine with horrendous cacaphony.

THRAK is, unfortunately, the only studio album produced by the 6-man "double trio" Crim, a configuration which was just beginning to figure out what it could do and be. Robert Fripp commented on one occasion that he felt that the 6-man Crim left him little room to do anything; Adrian Belew has stated a definite performance for a quartet ("any quartet," as long Fripp is in it); and there's little doubt that the double trio's music could get _very_ busy and even confused. But a few tracks on here ("VROOOOM, "VROOOM VROOOM," and "B'boom") are as powerful as anything a Crimson quartet has ever produced, and one song ("One Time") is just about unbearably beautiful, but, somehow, wasn't _quite_ successful in performances by the four-man 2000 model Crimson. Pity.

The title track, "Thrak," may be the single heaviest bit of heavy metal I have ever encountered. Listen at your peril.