There’s something audacious about King Crimson’s sound, something so over the top it can seem almost funny—less like a joke than the dumbstruck feeling of watching a complex machine at work, or something suddenly catch fire. Though fairly tagged as pioneers of progressive rock, the London band is more than that, evolving from the psychedelia-based sound of 1969's In the Court of the Crimson King (“21st Century Schizoid Man”) through the jazz improvisations of 1973's Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (“Easy Money”), from the New Wave-y tilt of 1981's Discipline to the post-metal clang of 2000's The Construkction of Light, always finding new wrinkles in the old guitar-bass-drums lineup. Blistering, strange, and simmering with ideas, this is King Crimson at their best.