Octopus

The title is a pun on octo opus, one for each of the eight pieces, and Phil Shulman credited the idea to his wife, Bobbi. He said the pieces were first meant as musical portraits of the band and its roadies. Gary Green recalled that the band went in confident, with their studio skills, Ray's above all, growing, and that the engineer Martin Rushent fell in step with their madness. Weathers' drumming gave it a harder, more rocking edge than Three Friends. The sleeve ties the songs to sources from the medieval troubadour to Albert Camus, and The Boys in the Band is an instrumental dedicated to the band and Rushent.

The British sleeve is by Roger Dean. Columbia dropped that cover for a die-cut octopus in a jar, painted by Charles White III to a design by John Berg, and held the American release back to February 1973. It reached 170 on the Billboard 200 and did not chart in Britain. AllMusic gave it four and a half stars, Prog placed it 65th among the greatest prog albums, and Rolling Stone Italia ranks it second among the band's eleven studio records.

Steven Wilson remixed it for a 2015 CD and Blu-ray on Alucard, which reached 34 on the UK Rock & Metal chart. Some multitracks were missing, so The Advent of Panurge, Raconteur Troubadour and The Boys in the Band appear in their original stereo mixes on the CD.