King Crimson

It has often been pointed out on these pages how absurd it is to pit prog against punk (see also this feature). But the long wave of progressive rock reached even further, brushing up against the borders of one of the dominant genres of the '90s: Seattle grunge. An elective affinity that can be summed up in one special bond: that between Kurt Cobain and King Crimson, and in particular their 1974 album, the revolutionary "Red".

Red in the evening

Barely forty minutes to demolish decades' worth of future clichés about progressive rock. That's what "Red" is, first and foremost: the summation of an entire era already fading into dusk, but also an essential handbook for the rock of the future. A fertile hybrid that, in one stroke, makes a mockery of all the nonsense about prog's supposed artificiality as opposed to the genuineness of "street-level" rock'n'roll. No instrumental navel-gazing, no mustiness: "Red" is modern, abrasive rock, in which even the symphonic passages turn into searing detonations.
It's no surprise, then, that among its most fervent admirers was none other than Kurt Cobain. The Nirvana frontman went so far as to call "Red" the "greatest album of all time". What's more, Robert Fripp has recounted that the record was found in Cobain's CD player after his death. The story is said to have been revealed by producer Butch Vig, during a conversation with John Wetton, the singer and bassist who was in King Crimson for three albums (1973's "Larks' Tongues In Aspic", and 1974's "Starless And Bible Black" and "Red").

Beyond the anecdotes, though, the connection is above all musical: the influence of "Red" seems to resurface in the pursuit of a physical, raw, unpolished sound that would go on to define "In Utero".
Released in 1993, Nirvana's third and final album was also a reaction to the sonic perfection of "Nevermind" and to the sheer scale of its success. Cobain wanted to recapture friction, noise, extreme dynamics, the feeling of a band playing with no filters. The choice of Steve Albini was decisive: huge, natural-sounding drums, guitars left free to claw and scrape, feedback, distortion and violent dynamic shifts. "Scentless Apprentice", with its monolithic riff and Dave Grohl's devastating drumming, is perhaps the clearest example; "Milk It" alternates ghostly silences with explosions, while "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" turns feedback and noise into structural elements. Even beneath the melody of "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" there remains something rough and corrosive.

The break from an era

This is where the imprint of “Red” becomes most visible. Naturally, it's not a matter of mere musical copying – the coordinates are always very distant – but rather a shared conception of sound. Nearly twenty years before “In Utero”, Fripp, Wetton and Bruford had already grasped how modern music built on this scorching, abrasive tension could be. And it's precisely this modernity that makes “Red” an anomaly in the history of progressive rock. King Crimson had decisively helped shape its imagery with “In The Court Of The Crimson King” in 1969: mellotron, expansive atmospheres, psychedelic echoes, improvisation and symphonic grandeur. Five years later, Fripp seems intent on destroying that same language from within. The complexity remains, but it loses almost all ornamental character. Virtuosity doesn't disappear: it's bent toward violence. The symphonic quality survives, but becomes menacing. And the guitar, instead of embroidering, strikes hard.
The revolution had been announced by “Larks’ Tongues In Aspic” (1973) and “Starless And Bible Black” (1974), which had shown Fripp's determination to dismantle prog's dogmas through increasingly angular, obsessive and percussive guitar playing. “Red” pushes that process to the point of no return. Without entirely dispersing the romantic, solemn spirit of the early King Crimson, Fripp invents a kind of lean, razor-sharp heavy-prog destined to reverberate through the following decades.
A sonic vision distilled in the twelve minutes of “Starless”, which sum up King Crimson's past while simultaneously surpassing it. It opens with the ancient enchantment of the mellotron, Fripp's aching phrase and Wetton's mournful vocal; then the music empties out and one of the most formidable tension-builds in rock history begins. Fripp obsessively repeats a minimal figure while bass and drums accumulate pressure, until the whole band explodes and the initial theme returns, transfigured by the sax. Cosmic stillness and paroxysmal tension, romanticism and brutality find here their definitive synthesis.
Without dispersing the romantic, solemn spirit that had made the fortune of the early King Crimson, then, supreme leader Fripp carries out yet another rebirth, inventing a kind of heavy-prog that – at the risk of running into an oxymoron – one might call lean, so harsh and sharp is it. Fripp proves once again to be a two-faced genius: on one side the erudite avant-gardist pursuing an “artistic” vision, on the other the rock musician who knows how to hit the listener in the gut. Here, then, the tools of prog's trade – violin, keyboards, oboe, mellotron – coexist with the guitar assaults of an ensemble never so aggressive, on a record that sounds like a black mass, with its unsettling symbolism (“red nightmare”, “fallen angel”, “bible black”…).

Two trajectories

“Red” and “In Utero“, moreover, also share a curious position in their respective trajectories. They are both terminal records, made by bands that had reached a critical point in their history, and both react against what threatened to imprison them. King Crimson seemed to want to flee the progressive rock they had helped invent; Nirvana – and their leader in particular – tried to escape the lure of the mainstream rock world into which the success of “Nevermind” had catapulted them. In both cases, the response comes through a hardening of the sound and a rejection of polish.
When “Red” hit stores on October 6, 1974, King Crimson had already broken up: Fripp had decreed the band's end just weeks earlier. The record achieves no great commercial success, but time will grant it an immense vindication. More than the testament of the prog era, it would end up becoming its definitive ferry crossing into another age. The sky is starless, angels fall, and the King is about to take leave of his court. And yet “Red” speaks above all of the future: of the most oblique metal, of math-rock, of noise and post-rock, but also of that kid from Aberdeen (USA) who many years later would count it among his own cult records.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

27/07/2026