Discipline
by King Crimson

Discipline by King Crimson
Year: 1981
Release date: 1981-09-22
Overall rank: 535th   Overall chart history
Average Rating: 
80/100 (from 631 votes)
  Ratings distribution   Average rating history
Accolades:
Award Top 5 albums of 1981 (3rd)
Award Top 100 albums of of the 1980s (81st)
Award Top 1,000 albums of all time (535th)

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King Crimson bestography

Discipline is ranked 3rd best out of 100 albums by King Crimson on BestEverAlbums.com.

The best album by King Crimson is In The Court Of The Crimson King (An Observation By King Crimson) which is ranked number 26 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 26,595.

King Crimson album bestography « Higher ranked (140th)
Red
This album (535th)
Discipline
Lower ranked (756th) »
Larks' Tongues In Aspic

(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).

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Discipline track list

  Track ratings The tracks on this album have an average rating of 82 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).

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Discipline rankings

Discipline rankings summary
Overall rank: 535th | 1980s rank: 81st | 1981 rank: 3rd  Overall chart history
(Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings). (Last updated: 1 hour ago).
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YearSourceChartRankRank Score
2026bonnequestionMy top 100 from BEA's top 100063/100 -
2026 Robert Anton WilsonTop 100 Music Albums of the 1980s8/10019
2026AbsurdCheesecakeTop 60 Music Albums of the 1980s24/6012
2026 RockyRaccoonTop 41 Music Albums of 19814/415
2026 ExTeaSeaTop 79 Music Albums of 198120/794
2026TroutMaskGregTop 100 Music Albums of the 1980s96/1001
2026FelipeBoorkesTop 100 Greatest Music Albums80/10020
2026JohnnyoBest 80's prog rock albums by Loudwire10/11 -
2026matterhornriderTop 50 Music Albums of 19816/505
2026 JoaoMoreiraTop 5 Music Albums of 19815/51
2026pinkfreud1981Top 100 Music Albums of the 1980s34/10013
2026stangetzawayTop 100 Music Albums of the 1980s25/10015
2026leniadTop 100 Music Albums of the 1980s89/1002
2026SonoffatboyTop 20 Music Albums of the 1980s8/2013
2026 SuperunknownTop 100 Greatest Music Albums100/1001
2026PurpleHazelTop 31 Music Albums of 19814/315
2026 CharadeTop 100 Greatest Music Albums5/10091
2026bonnequestionMy Favorite Prog-Rock Albums32/100 -
2026bonnequestionMy top 100 from BEA's top 200077/100 -
2026 Robert Anton WilsonTop 24 Music Albums of 19812/245
Total Charts: Help The total number of charts that this album has appeared in. 468
Total Rank Score: Help The total rank score. 3,222
You can include this album in your own chart from the My Charts page!

Discipline collection

Discipline ratings

Average Rating: 
80/100 (from 631 votes)
  Ratings distribution Help Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AV
where:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.

Showing latest 5 ratings for this album.  | Show all 631 ratings for this album.

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RatingDate updatedMemberAlbum ratingsAvg. album rating
 
80/100
 !
07/23/2026 22:51 xhitmanx  Ratings distribution  1,57274/100
 
85/100
 !
07/12/2026 18:02 liquidbottle  Ratings distribution  77582/100
 
95/100
 !
05/26/2026 02:25 progfan  Ratings distribution  3295/100
 
90/100
 !
05/10/2026 19:26 emnasut  Ratings distribution  15387/100
 
90/100
 !
05/10/2026 12:08 Adhura  Ratings distribution  1,69677/100

Rating metrics: Help Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)

This album is rated in the top 1% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 80.1/100, a mean average of 79.4/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 80.2/100. The standard deviation for this album is 14.0.


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Discipline comments

Showing latest 10 comments | Show all 25 comments |
Most Helpful First | Newest First | Positive Sentiment First | Longest Comments First
(Only showing comments with -2 votes or higher. You can alter this threshold from your profile page. Manage Profile)

Rating:  
75/100
From 09/07/2022 18:45 | #289478
The influences are obvious (Talking Heads, Brian Eno) ane it is more experimental side of King Crimson, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
90/100
From 08/19/2022 05:17 | #288666
A great album for having come after a lengthy break. A good mix of their classic prog sound and some more easy to access stuff!
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
85/100
From 03/31/2022 08:14 | #283632
A prog album per day saves the day!
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
75/100
From 03/09/2022 19:27 | #282574
I can hear in this album the evidence for influencing later bands (my ear hears elements that would later emerge from Primus and Alice In Chains). I suppose that makes Discipline an important record, but I’m not convinced the influence makes it a great record.

The spoken word lyrics are so, so dumb. And the lack of continuity from song to song makes it tough to truly enjoy.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
85/100
From 01/31/2022 13:01 | #280350
Their best output during the '80s. Unbelievable how they radically changed their sound but remained King Crimson. Despite the fact that only Fripp and Bruford stayed.

Again KC paved the way for others to follow. Just listen to Elephant Talk and then to Jerry was a Racecar Driver from Primus. KC did it better though.

King Crimson shows how you can stay relevant as a 70's dinosaur. They simply pushed the music forward in another direction.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +2 votes (2 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
80/100
From 02/26/2021 22:20 | #266716
Pra falar a verdade eu não entendi bem esse álbum. Um new wave frenético? Um progressivo funkiado?
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | 0 votes (0 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
90/100
From 12/05/2020 08:01 | #262012
Been diggin this album for 40 years. Timeless, and awesomely weird.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +1 votes (1 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
It's a very busy album which leaves me feeling almost breathless after side 2 concludes. Not an album to put on if you want to relax. I get the references to Talking Heads and it works. What I like about King Crimson is that every album sounds like a different band and this is no exception. When I am in the right mood I really enjoy this, however, personally I prefer the jazzier offerings like Lizard.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +6 votes (6 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
I saw Adrian Belew play a bar in Iowa City in...had to be...1981 or 82. So, he had been on Sheik Yerbouti, Remain In Light, this album which everybody seemed to love...and there were maybe 300 people there, and he was playing with a recorded rhythm track so when we got him to do an encore, he just played the first two songs on the tape again. He said, "Who here remembers their first acid trip?" and we whooped and hollered. Amazingly small-time performance for a guy who could play arenas with three different world-class bands at the time.

His vocals and his whole personality just transformed what King Crimson was capable of--Americanized the whole operation, and for the good.

This album was completely on trend at the time, with the talky prose poem over music like Laurie Anderson etc, the Talking Heads-style funk on the opening track, the anagram song title like Eno had done, this was working out iterations of ideas that were in the air at the time. But Fripp was working out his own ideas musically, and his output in these years was very diverse, from his Frippertronics stuff to the album with Daryl Hall and the League of Gentlemen album.

He had done the spiritual study with JG Bennett, and he was coming out with all this diverse product, plus the alternate tuning, and pretty soon he started giving holistic guitar clinics to...anybody who wanted to sign up. Every interview he gave was like words from an oracle, and every album was an important statement. Discipline, for the crowd I was hanging with, was a monolithic, landmark album, we didn't so much listen to it as study it. Stands up pretty well after all these years.
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | +7 votes (7 helpful | 0 unhelpful)
Rating:  
90/100
From 04/15/2019 23:33 | #235043
Best track: "Frame By Frame"
Weakest track: "Indiscipline"
Helpful?  (Log in to vote) | -2 votes (0 helpful | 2 unhelpful)

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