Holy fuck! Crimson lose Ian McDonald and the band convince exiting members Greg Lake and Mike Giles to cut an album before they leave.
How could Crimson follow the previous debut albums perfection?
By copying it of course!

After a brief intro of ‘Peace’ the boys come blasting in with the hairy jazz metal genius of ‘Pictures Of A city’ some folk think this is a poor mans ‘Schizoid Man’ but it’s way better and more fucked up.Greg Lake has an amazing powerful voice and really lets rip on this underrated gem.

‘Cadence And Cascade’ is Crimsons “we can do a normal ballad honest”!
a bit of lightweight acoustic fluff with twatty lyrics about groupies or something,then comes the bulky mellotron wankery of the title track which is very similar to the previous years ‘Epitaph’ but no way near as good.

‘Peace- a theme’ is a beautiful acoustic solo by Robert Fripp which is followed up by the bizarre single ‘Cat Food’ with great jazzy noodly piano
from Keith Tippett, boy is this a strange choice of single.

The 3 part ‘Devils Triangle’ is Crimsons version of Holst’s Mars Bringer of War and this piece is very ominous with scattering snare drums truly out of control mellotrons and sound effects i love this weird fucked up stuff.

Crimson in my opinion came up with a classic second lp unfairly overshadowed by their mighty debut.Greg Lake left to form E.L.P. and never topped his work with King Crimson.