Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album, made up of keyboard-dominated instrumentals ("The Barbarian," "Three Fates") and romantic ballads ("Lucky Man") showcasing all three members' very daunting talents. This album, which reached the Top 20 in America and got to number four in England, showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly – with the exception of a few moments on "Three Fates" and perhaps "Take a Pebble," there isn't much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here. "Take a Pebble" might have passed for a Moody Blues track of the era but for the fact that none of the Moody Blues' keyboard men could solo like Keith Emerson.

The Return of the Manticore is a beautifully packaged four-disc set that gathers essential tracks, covering ELP's best albums and offering up some re-recorded favorites as well. The first disc begins with an alternate version of 1986's "Touch and Go" that emphasizes Carl Palmer's presence. The disc also includes a cover of "Hang on to a Dream," originally by Keith Emerson's former band The Nice, and King Crimson's pièce de résistance "21st Century Schizoid Man." A new recording of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown's "Fire" rounds out Disc 1's novelties. The remaining discs overflow with ELP's greatest creations, pleasing the most avid fan and saturating the curious beginner. A new, extended recording of "Pictures at an Exhibition" is a must-hear, accompanied by a choir and recorded in full surround sound. A stunning unreleased version of "Rondo" and a bizarrely entertaining adaptation of "Bo Diddley" are also highlights…

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Well, such is the idea for an Emerson, Lake & Palmer compilation, but this one does tend to fall a bit short, literally. After all, since it was originally released as an LP, the disc comes in at less than 40 minutes. Certainly with a catalog as rich as Emerson, Lake & Palmer's it is extremely difficult for one CD (especially a short one) to truly capture the essence of the group. This one fails both as a chronological compilation and as the best-of that it is billed as being. That said, there are some good points here. "Lucky Man," "Peter Gunn," and "Still You Turn Me On" are all essential Emerson, Lake & Palmer cuts that truly work well here.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer had just released the then-current two-volume Works album in 1977 when the group embarked on a major tour behind it, accompanied by a 70-piece orchestra. Travelling and touring with a large orchestra, however, proved to be a financial nightmare, and the orchestra ended up on-stage with ELP on only a handful of the tour dates, including the final stop of the tour in Montreal - in the largest stadium the band ever played in. The show was recorded and filmed (a film of the concert, Emerson, Lake & Palmer in Concert, was released in 1979), but the band was ending its run together, having become three musicians pulling in three different creative directions. The audio portion of the concert appeared in 1993 as Works Live, and this two-disc issue features the same tracks in slightly different order, and minus a few…

It really includes most of their essential work in a single CD. Here are all their major singles, like the stunning version of Jerusalem but not only their most popular songs, it does include some stuff that would not be found in other best of, like the complete Tarkus Suite and the entire 8:54 minute Trilogy title track. All three band members were virtuosos and had a lot to show. This CD does them justice. Unlike a lot of this kind of albums, it does give a very good overview of one of prog´s most influential and important bands ever.

After the heavily distorted bass and doomsday church organ of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album, the exhilarating prog rock of epic proportions on Tarkus, and the violent removal of the sacred aura of classical tunes on Pictures at an Exhibition, Trilogy, ELP's fourth album, features the trio settling down in more crowd-pleasing pastures. Actually, the group was gaining in maturity what they lost in raw energy. Every track on this album has been carefully thought, arranged, and performed to perfection, a process that also included some form of sterilization. Greg Lake's acoustic ballad "From the Beginning" put the group on the charts for a second time. The adaptation of Aaron Copland's "Hoedown" also yielded a crowd-pleaser…

One of the seminal documents of the progressive rock era, a record that made its way into the collections of millions of high-school kids who never heard of Modest Mussorgsky and knew nothing of Russia's Nationalist "Five." It does some violence to Mussorgsky, but Pictures at an Exhibition is also the most energetic and well-realized live release in Emerson, Lake & Palmer's catalog, and it makes a fairly compelling case for adapting classical pieces in this way. At the time, it introduced "classical rock" to millions of listeners, including the classical community, most of whose members regarded this record as something akin to an armed assault. The early-'70s live sound is a little crude by today's standards, but the tightness of the playing (Carl Palmer is especially good) makes up for any sonic inadequacies…

Greg Lake left behind a rich musical legacy when he passed away in 2016. As a member of Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, pre-Crim bands The Shy Limbs and The Shame – not to mention his talents as a solo artist, producer, and composer – he helped define the landscape of progressive rock. A new career-spanning compilation called The Anthology: A Musical Journey will pay tribute to his contributions through the decades. It will be released on October 23 through BMG.

Popular English progressive rock group formed by members of The Nice (Keith Emerson), King Crimson (Greg Lake) and Atomic Rooster (Carl Palmer). The band are notable for their classical and jazz influenced compositions, virtuoso musicianship and over-the-top live performances.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's 1970 eponymous LP was only a rehearsal. It hit hard because of the novelty of the act (allegedly the first supergroup in rock history), but felt more like a collection of individual efforts and ideas than a collective work. All doubts were dissipated by the release of Tarkus in 1971…

Long-term ELP fans will doubtless recognize much of this box set as a reprise of sundry, previously released collections and anthologies, most notably the three Manticore Archives box sets of the early 2000s. The cumulative cost of those boxes, however, makes this a magnificent alternative, cherrypicking the very best of those earlier releases to create a one-stop portrait of one of the world's most exciting live bands at its best. With 43 tracks spread across four discs, the first three CDs are sensibly divided between the three primary eras of the band - soundboard quality collections of "the early 1970s," taking us up through the band's 1974 tour; "the late 1970s," rounding up the Works tours of 1977-1978; and "the 1990s," capturing the reunions…