Imagine a Battle of the Bands. Only, instead of weekend rockers vying to win a case of Bud Light and a chance to open for Loverboy at the county fair, it's an event where competitors are trying to perform musical invocations to raise Satan.

You'd have your devil metal folks, of course, with their bear-howl vocals and corpse-paint makeup and guitars shaped like medieval battle axes. And there'd be the leering Marilyn Manson types, with the butt-cheek cut-out leather pants, their Anton LaVey endorsements, and absinthe-fueled cabaret songs disguised as rock anthems.

Well, forget it, charlatans.

I'm pretty sure that, if any band in the world could literally summon a dark god, that band would be the latest calibration of King Crimson.

On Thursday night in New York City, for the first of four sold-out shows at the Best Buy Theater, King Crimson Mark VIII put on a two-hour demonstration of such majesty and creative vision that, indeed, the solid foundations of empirical reality seemed to blur and sway.

This is a band many fans believed would never tour again. Guitarist Robert Fripp, the sole original member and leader, has for years seemed indifferent to the idea of KC - for recording or touring purposes. It was a delightful surprise, then, when a new incarnation was announced late last year - and the musicians spanned and represented all aspects of the group's kaleidoscopic history.

Along with Fripp, there are Tony Levin (bass/vocals), Jakko Jakszyk (vocals/guitar), Mel Collins (woodwinds) and drummers Gavin Harrison, Pat Mastelotto and Bill Rieflin.

The two-tiered set-up had the percussion squad and their three kits on the lip of the stage; the remaining musicians were backlined with Fripp seated (as always) at the far right. All were dressed in Savile Row finery as though to add even more dignity to an already heavyweight occasion. (Between tunes, archival recordings of goofy band radio interviews demonstrated the band's underappreciated sense of humor.)

As for the music, the members finessed churning, shifting arrangements of career-spanning material with mesmeric precision. It was rather like watching (and hearing) musical spinal surgery. The songs built and evoked a twirling, brooding, almost suffocating sense of anguish, dark power, seething energy and frenetic tension that, in a sum-is-greater-than-the-parts context, gradually produced a crescendo effect of wonder and awe.

When they want to, King Crimson can be the heaviest band in the world; ask folks like Tool or Opeth. At the same time, they deliver moments of delicate beauty that lend nobility and grace to the idea of melancholy. It was all on display Thursday through "Larks' Tongues in Aspic" (parts I and II), "Red" and "One More Red Nightmare," "Pictures of a City," "VROOM," "The Letters" and "Sailor's Tale," "The ConstruKction of Light," "Starless" and the iconic closer, "Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man."

Raise the devil? Maybe King Crimson pulled off a greater feat simply by resurrecting themselves.

r.koster@theday.com

Twitter: @rickkoster