Despite all the pretentiousness, there's still some good stuff that can be found on the band's first five albums, such as "The Barbarian", "Tarkus", "The Curse of Baba Yaga", "The Endless Enigma" and, most definitely, "First Impression, Part 2" of Karn Evil 9 ("Welcome Back, My Friends to the Show that never ends!")
Excerpts from "First Impression, Part 2" have even been used for the theme song and incidental music of BBC Television's prime-time show "The Generation Game" -- though not the bit about "seven virgins and a mule", obviously.
Covered Up: Most people who aren't classical music listeners are most likely to identify "Pictures at an Exhibition" with ELP than with Modest Mussorgsky.
Hell Is That Noise: "Toccata," most definitely. A prog version of a twentieth century composition that features strong discontinuity, dissonance, and sensory abuse. One of ELP's more frightening recordings. It's also so very much Creepy Awesome.
Narm Charm: "Lucky Man". Yes, the lyrics are simplistic and naive (it was written by a twelve-year-old Greg Lake). Yes, the guitar and vocals are pretty. And yes, it's pretty sadnonetheless.
Nightmare Fuel: On the one hand, a lot of ELP's attempts at this come across as Nightmare Retardant. On the other, they could pull it off when they tried, as seen with "The Barbarian", "Toccata", possibly "Knife Edge" and maybe Keith Emerson's distorted computer voice at the end of "Karn Evil 9".
They Just Didn't Care: While the band has claimed that "The Endless Enigma", "Trilogy", and "Living Sin" (all from Trilogy) didn't translate well in a live setting, the musical chops the band showed in similar tunes suggests otherwise.