Wiki
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Release Date
22 January 2003
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Length
11 tracks
The Power to Believe is the thirteenth and most recent studio album by English progressive rock band King Crimson. It was released on 4 March 2003 through Sanctuary Records and met with generally favorable reviews, with several critics appreciating its heightened aggression. It is the second and final album to feature the “Double Duo” lineup of Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Trey Gunn and Pat Mastelotto, and the last studio album to feature Belew and Gunn. The Power to Believe was preceded by the EP Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With (2002), which features alternate and otherwise unreleased tracks.
After a tour opening for Tool in 2001, King Crimson refined and focused their four-piece structure for their second album in that configuration. Prior to its release in 2003, The Power to Believe was preceded by Level Five (2001) and Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With (2002), two EPs that functioned as work-in-progress reveals for the album, which Fripp described as "the culmination of three years of Crimsonising". While Level Five was a live release featuring two songs that would appear on the full album, Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With was a limited-edition studio release that, much like 1994's VROOOM to 1995's THRAK, featured alternate and early versions of its upcoming album's tracks.
Originally titled Nuovo Metal, The Power to Believe continued the aggressive and occasionally industrial experimentation of King Crimson's previous album, 2000's The Construkction of Light, with several critics appreciating its increased weight. Like that previous album, The Power to Believe was recorded with King Crimson as a four-piece.
The album derives its title from "The Power to Believe", a four-part suite of songs that runs throughout the album. The phrase originally appeared in the song "All Her Love Is Mine" from Adrian Belew's 1996 solo album Op Zop Too Wah. The album's second track, "Level Five", acts as the fifth and final entry in the "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" suite, which began with parts one and two from the 1973 album Larks' Tongues in Aspic. Lindsay Planer of AllMusic wrote that "Level Five" "is so intense that it could easily be mistaken for the likes of Tool, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, or KMFDM."
In 2019, King Crimson announced that The Power to Believe would be the fifteenth and final phase of their “40th Anniversary” release schedule. An enhanced and expanded master of the album was released in hi-res stereo audio as well as lossless 5.1 Surround Sound.
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