July 6, 1972 - Trilogy

Just over a year after their second studio album "Tarkus", Emerson, Lake & Palmer released their third album "Trilogy" on July 6, 1972. Only 8 months after the release of "Pictures At An Exhibition", ELP are really pumping out the albums! This one has a different style than either of their first two studio albums and decades later Greg Lake claimed that it was his favourite ELP album. Everything they've released so far has been great, I'm sure this will be too!

Side one begins with "The Endless Engima (Part 1)"and quiet, weird synths open the song. We hear some nice piano flourishes by Keith Emerson and cool percussion by Carl Palmer. A more standard drumbeat and bass by Lake start a new part led by some great organ. Lake's epic voice sounds great as usual and this song has great contributions from everyone. Some epic piano closes out the song and up next is a short instrumental called "Fugue". Quiet, but cool piano starts it off and it speeds up to a very cool part with bass backing. That Emerson guy is pretty talented! This segues right into "The Endless Enigma (Part 2)" which has Emerson on organ at first but switches to some epic synthesizer. They return to the verse from part 1, but the synths make it really cool this time! Track 4 is "From The Beginning" and has Lake playing some cool acoustic guitar. He sings softly and plays cool bass as well. He adds a pretty good electric guitar solo, followed by a cool synth solo! The next song "The Sheriff" starts with a nice drum opening and we hear Palmer say "shit" when he hits the rim of his drum. It moves to some saloon-style organ and even in this style, Lake's voice sounds good. The organ is pretty neat, but not their best song though. The nice sped up ending makes it better for sure! The final track on this side is "Hoedown", an Aaron Copland cover from his ballet "Rodeo". There's some pretty sweet organ by Emerson and some thundering drums by Palmer. There is so much awesome organin this song! Emerson plays synthesizer that sounds crazy as well, and this is surely an awesome instrumental, and it would go on to open their live shows for the following tour. 

Side two starts with the near 9-minute title track "Trilogy" which opens with some slow, beautiful piano and soft singing by Lake. Great stuff by Emerson, pianon sounds awesome . A new rockin' part starts with synthesizer on lead and it sounds crazy good! Around the 5:00 mark is a new riff with more cool synths and quick singing by Lake. Tjey move to yet another new part with different sounding synths and great rhythm backing from Lake and Palmer. Emerson then starts playing both synths together for an insane sound! A great ending as well to finish off a great song. Track 8 is titled "Living Sin" and a cool organ riff carries as Lake sings really low! It doesn't sound like him at all, but it is cool I think, and we hear more of his typical awesome yelling later in the song. Pretty great drumming by Palmer throughout the song as this another good one. The final song on the album is an 8-minite instrumental called "Abaddon's Bolero". Light snare and quiet, but cool synths start the song but the synths change to a different sound as quiet guitar by Lake joins. Emerson adds other keyboards to the existing riff as it gets progressively louder throughout the song. The song starts a little slow but by the end there is a lot going on in another cool Emerson showcase on various different keyboards.

That is the end of "Trilogy" and as suspected, it was another great effort by ELP. "Hoedown" is my favourite song I think, but there is lots of great music on this album and no bad songs at all. But how does it compare to their previous work? I think I liked this album more than "Pictures At An Exhibition" which brings the question of their last studio album "Tarkus". The title track is an epic song for sure, but the second side of the album does have a couple lesser songs, so although it is close, I am placing "Trilogy" as their second best record yet, with their amazing debut staying on top. It's another "couple months" until my next release, as there are certainly less albums than recent years so far.