I normally don't like to label music-- usually that's done by record companies to market bands, so I normally try to stay away from stamping one label on a band because they rarely are the pure representation of that label. I was interested in King Crimson, though.

On the grunge label that I originally wrote, I read an article several years ago that said that King Crimson's sound in their 73-74 period was very "grungy" not to be compared with the grunge bands of the early 90's... just that it was very "grungy" sounding, with which I still somewhat agree; however, the word has way too many connotations to bands like Nirvana to used, so I should have never used that adjective to start with. Here are my final labels, with the help of IL Duce:

Period 1- "In the Court," "Poseidon," "Lizard," "Islands" (original progressive rock)
Period 2- "Larks' Tongues in Aspic," "Starless and Bible Black," "Red" (improvisational proto-progressive metal)
Period 3- "Discipline," "Beat," "Three of a Perfect Pair" (progressive new wave)
Period 4- "THRAK," "The Construction of Light," "The Power to Believe" (industrial and avant-garde progressive metal)

I disagree, so there.

I would make that five periods with Lizard and Islands being period 2.

I don't have "Islands," but but "Lizard" is certainly more jazzy than "ITCOTCK" or "ITWOP."

So, for the sake of conversation, how would you classify "Lizard" and "Islands"?

Prog rock with a jazz infusion is how I would describe them, nowhere as heavily jazz fused as say The Soft Machine though. At that time jazz fusion in rock was the in thing.

medieval jazz-folk prog?