Robert Fripp: “It's absurd not to mention King Crimson among metal's forerunners”

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Robert Fripp openly criticized the exclusion of King Crimson from the ranks of heavy metal's forerunners. According to the English guitarist, this amounts to a partial and misleading reconstruction of the genre's history, one that ignores documentable musical contributions.

Fripp cited a video circulating on YouTube, devoted to the ten songs that paved the way for heavy metal, in which "21st Century Schizoid Man" was nowhere to be found. An omission the musician called "absurd", noting how the track has been acknowledged and covered even by central figures of the metal scene. In particular, Fripp mentioned Ozzy Osbourne, who in 2005 recorded a cover of it for the album "Under Cover", accompanied by statements of admiration for King Crimson.

According to Fripp, the "metallic" element is not an occasional detour in the band's history, but a structural component of its sonic language. From the very beginning, King Crimson worked with extreme dynamics, aggressive timbres and a use of distortion that went beyond the conventions of rock at the time. An approach the guitarist has repeatedly described as an attempt to fuse rock's electric energy with compositional models drawn from classical music, explicitly citing the influence of Jimi Hendrix and the 20th-century repertoire of Béla Bartók.

The central reference point remains the debut album "In The Court Of The Crimson King", released in 1969. Within it, "21st Century Schizoid Man" is often cited by critics as one of the earliest fully-formed examples of proto-heavy metal: a track built on abrasive riffs, jagged rhythms and a sonic intensity that anticipates approaches later codified by metal in the Seventies and Eighties. Its impact has been recognized by numerous musicians and critics as a pivotal moment in the development of an aesthetic built on power, tension and controlled aggression.

Similar elements also emerge in the band's output immediately afterwards. The Elite Extremophile has noted that "The Devil's Triangle", included on 1970's "In The Wake Of Poseidon", pushes even further into an idea of sonic violence and dramatic accumulation, reworking in electric form ideas drawn from Gustav Holst's "Mars, The Bringer Of War". A clear example of how King Crimson translated orchestral and martial models into a radical rock language, anticipating expressive modes that metal would later develop systematically.

Meanwhile, as the new Beat project, reuniting Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Steve Vai and Danny Carey, takes on tour (including in Italy) the music of the "Discipline"-era King Crimson – the "wave" phase of the band that pioneered prog-rock, spanning three studio albums in the first half of the Eighties – British magazine Mojo goes back to the originals to compile its ranking of Robert Fripp's band's albums, "from worst to best".

"In 50 years of the band's on-and-off activity we've been flooded with more than eighty releases – Mojo recalls in its introduction – A bewildering assortment of studio albums, live records, compilations and archival releases from the King Crimson Collectors' Club. Incendiary tracks like 'Red' or 'Indiscipline' keep recurring, as does their anthem, '21st Century Schizoid Man'… So where to start? With Fripp as the only constant member, King Crimson's history splits into five eras: the fully progressive rockers (1969-72); the avant-rock band devoted to improvisation (1972-74); the lineup influenced by new wave and funk (1981-84); the prog-metallers of the 1994-2003 period; and, from 2014 to 2021, an expanded lineup that toured with no fewer than three drummers".

So here is Mojo's ranking of the 13 best King Crimson albums (full feature here).

13. The Power To Believe (2003)

12. Islands (1971)

11. Lizard (1970)

10. Beat (1982)

9. The ConstruKction Of Light (2000)

8. Three Of A Perfect Pair (1984)

7. In The Wake Of Poseidon (1970)

6. Thrak (1995)

5. Starless And Bible Black (1974)

4. Discipline (1981)

3. Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (1973)

2. Red (1974)

1. In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

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