Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | B |
| Rolling Stone | (favourable) |
| The Daily Vault | Cā |
Rolling Stone called the album "as stunningly powerful as In the Court of the Crimson King," praising Bruford's mastery of his percussive style and the successful integration of David Cross's violin and viola as a counter-soloist to Fripp. They found the album's variety of tones and lengthy instrumental improvisations particularly impressive, and concluded, "Fripp has finally assembled the band of his dreams ā hopefully it'll stay together long enough to continue producing albums as excellent as this one."
Allmusic also praised the album's variety of tones in their retrospective review, and remarked that the album's second side "threw the group's hardest sounds right in the face of the listener, and gained some converts in the process." Robert Christgau's review was more ambiguous, deeming it "as close as this chronically interesting group has ever come to a good album", even though he gave higher ratings to both Red and USA.
Read more about this topic: Starless And Bible Black
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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