Curse of the Hidden Mirror

Long Island's favorite metal-lite purveyors continued their comeback in 2001 with this unexpectedly accomplished set of new songs. Boasting the core of the original band with Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, Eric Bloom, and Alan Lanier, Curse of the Hidden Mirror stays rooted in the group's tough yet jangly approach but ups the ante with strong material that often matches, yet doesn't quite surpass, the band's best music. A return to the stylistic triumph of Agents of Fortune and the similarly titled Mirrors, the revived quintet coalesces around sharp riff-based rockers that show a band that has matured but hasn't lost its cosmic edge. Curse of the Hidden Mirror is a remarkably consistent, subtle, and even poetic album that expands their sci-fi undercurrents without getting lost in space. It's far better than some of the group's limp late-'80s work and stands as one of the finest albums of their nearly three decade -- and counting -- career of evil.

Heaven Forbid

Blue Oyster Cult prove that ten years sometimes doesn't account for all that much on Heaven Forbid, their first new studio album in a decade. Essentially, the group's sound has remained the same, with the same crunching power chords and sci-fi/horror lyrics that characterized their best songs. While the band sounds surprisingly muscular and powerful throughout Heaven Forbid, the material is below par, lacking memorable hooks or melodies. Still, some longtime fans might find the very fact that BOC is back and rocking harder then expected reassuring, and that may be reason enough to check out Heaven Forbid.

Workshop of the Telescopes

Blue Oyster Cult was long in need of a thorough career retrospective, and this is it. Thirty-two tracks filling up two discs with a total running time of 154:46, Workshop of the Telescopes traces BOC through 14 years as the kings of lite metal, 1972-1986. Actually, as annotator Arthur Levy notes, there are at least two phases in that era. The first, running through 1974, includes the classic first two albums, Blue Oyster Cult and Tyranny and Mutation, when BOC was one of the few acts in those pre-punk days bucking the trend toward soft rock without indulging in the more grotesque aspects of heavy metal. This material takes up disc one. Disc two leads off with "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," which launched the second phase of the band's career, when it sought to balance its hard-rocking approach (heard especially in concert) with pop accessibility. Since this period was marked by uneven material, it is ripe for compiling, and the selection here is good. On the whole, Workshop of the Telescopes lives up to Levy's description of it as "the ultimate BOC anthology." It's about time.

Live 1976

Blue Oyster Cult was for the most part a touring band, and this European import, released 15 years after the concert it chronicled, shows them at their 1970s touring peak. At the end of 1976, they were touring behind their most successful album, Agents of Fortune, and single, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." They played only ten songs, including their recent hit, old favorites like "Stairway to the Stars" and "Cities on Flame," and their in-concert barnburner "Born To Be Wild," but it took them over 78 minutes to do so, in part because of a version of "This Ain't the Summer of Love" that ran nearly 13 minutes and a "Buck's Boogie" that ran over 19 minutes, many of them given over to a good old-fashioned 1970s drum solo. That and the speech about legalizing marijuana have a touch of nostalgic indulgence, of course, but much of the music is blazing guitar rock, and a listen helps explain why BOC was so loved by its concert fans, even as it was virtually ignored by the music industry and the country in general. Sound quality is good, but rudimentary; the album sounds more like a soundboard tape than a conventionally mixed and EQ'd commercial album. Crank it up, though, and you just might like it better.

Nail You Down

Downloaded this off the Internet some years ago then transferred it onto cassette. Due to conflicting sources, still not sure if its a bootleg, an import or a 1992 official release authorized by the band. What is clear is that this is a quality show from Perkins Palace in Pasadena, California on July 23, 1983. Worth getting hands on.

Imaginos

Blue Oyster Cult went out with a bang as a major-label recording act on their 14th and last new Columbia album, Imaginos. The idea for this concept album came as early as Secret Treaties, on which some of its music appeared, and the recording took place over a six-year period. (As a result, album credits give the erroneous impression that the original band had reformed.) The story line, which is easier to appreciate in the liner notes than on the record, concerns a mysterious, protean 19th century figure who has a talent for turning up at key moments in history and influencing them for the worse. This is perhaps BOC's most consistent album, certainly its most uncompromising (none of its usual nods to pop accessibility), and also the closest thing to a real heavy-metal statement from a band that never quite fit that description. Unfortunately, this ambitious work came out as BOC was dropping out of the frontline of the music business, so the album that comes closest to defining Blue Oyster Cult turned into its creative swan song.

Club Ninja

Blue Oyster Cult's gradual disintegration continued with Club Ninja, on which original member Allen Lanier was replaced by keyboard player Tom Zvoncheck, and several compositions from outside the band were featured, notably the Leggart Brothers' "White Flags," and a couple of generic metal exercises by Bob Halligan, who had contributed much the same sort of material to . Judas Priest. On what should have been the positive side, Sandy Pearlman was back in the producer's chair. But he did nothing to arrest BOC's decline into musical anonymity.

The Revolution by Night

Blue Oyster Cult seemed to regain their direction with Fire of Unknown Origin, but simultaneously, the band was starting to fragment, with founding member and notable songwriter Albert Bouchard departing. On The Revolution by Night, BOC brought in various hired guns, such as Aldo Nova and former Alice Cooper bandmember Neal Smith, and turned to Loverboy's producer, Bruce Fairbairn who gave them a similar radio-ready rock sound. But though the album brought BOC their fourth (and final) singles chart entry in "Shooting Shark," it lacked a distinctive identity. You could close your eyes and not know whether you were listening to Loverboy or Foreigner or any one of several other arena rock bands. No wonder it became the band's lowest charting album in a decade.

Extraterrestrial Live

Of the Blue Oyster Cults three live albums, Extraterrestrial Live is the one to own. The two-record set, partially recorded on BOC's home base of Long Island, contains the band's biggest hits, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (making its second live appearance) and "Burnin' for You," as well as longtime concert favorites like "Cities on Flame," "The Red and the Black," and "Godzilla." But it isn't just the superior song selection that gives this album the nod over On Your Feet or on Your Knees and Some Enchanted Evening; BOC had regained its momentum in 1981 with Fire of Unknown Origin, and this album demonstrated their renewed spirit in the forum in which they were most comfortable -- live work.

Fire of Unknown Origin

Who would have thought that in 1981, after a pair of limp, unfocused studio offerings, and two mixed -- at best -- live outings, that the once mighty Blue Oyster Cult would come back with such a fierce, creative, and uncompromising effort as Fire of Unknown Origin. Here was their finest moment since Agents of Fortune five years earlier, and one of their finest ever. Bringing back into the fold the faithful team who helped articulate their earlier vision, producer Sandy Pearlman, Rich Meltzer, and Patti Smith all helped in the lyric department, as did science-fiction and dark-fantasy writer Micheal Moonrock. The band's sound was augmented by a plethora of keyboards courtesy of Allen Lanier, but nonetheless retained a modicum of its heaviness, and the sheer songwriting craft that had helped separate the band form its peers early on was everywhere evident here.

Cultosaurus Erectus

Signing on with Deep Purple/Black Sabbath producer Martin Birch, Blue Oyster Cult made more of a guitar-heavy hard rock album in Cultosaurus Erectus after flirting with pop ever since the success of Agents of Fortune. (They also promoted this album by going out on a co-headlining tour with Sabbath.) Gone are the female backup singers, the pop hooks, the songs based on keyboard structures, and they are replaced by lots of guitar solos and a beefed-up rhythm section. But the band still were not generating strong enough material to compete with their concert repertoire, so they found themselves in the bind of being a strong touring act unable to translate that success into record sales.

Mirrors

Blue Oyster Cult tried a new producer on Mirrors, replacing longtime mentor Sandy Pearlman with Tom Werman, a CBS staffer who had worked with Cheap Trick and Ted Nugent. The result is an album that tries to straddle pop and hard rock just as those acts did, emphasizing choral vocals (plus female backup) and a sharp, trebly sound. But this approach appeared to displease longtime metal-oriented fans without attracting new ones: "In Thee" became a minor singles-chart entry, but the album broke BOC 's string of five gold or platinum albums in a row. The real reason simply may have been that the songs weren't distinctive enough. Much of this is generic hard rock that could have been made by any one of a dozen '70s arena bands.

Some Enchanted Evening

Some Enchanted Evening is the mighty beast that is Blue Oyster Cult's best-selling record, with numbers signifying double platinum. Yeah, small potatoes by today's standards, but then the music industry is self-destructing anyway; these totals sum up not only the BOC faithful, but those who were initially turned onto the band through this wonder of a cut-up live record. And the reason? Because it kicks serious rock & roll ass, that's why. BOC had released its first live record, On Your Feet or on Your Knees in 1975, just three years earlier with only two studio offerings in between. Wondering why? There were two absolute smashes -- Agents of Fortune (1976) and Spectres (1977) -- in between. The grueling touring they took on in support of these albums dictated a rest, and thus Some Enchanted Evening was assembled and released.

Spectres

Blue Oyster Cult scored big with Agents of fortune and its now-classic rock hit, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." It took the album into the stratosphere and the band's profile with it; it put them in the visible pop space they'd tried for years to get to. But upon arrival, they found that kind of success difficult to respond to. Not only did BOC want to respond, they wanted to cement their place. Spectres is not the masterpiece that Agents of Fortune is, but it didn't need to be. However, upon hearing Spectres again, the album offers proof that the commercial and creative bent of Agents of Fortune was still in place at certain moments, and the band laid out a major single in the opening cut, "Godzilla," a tune -- however silly it may be -- that is every bit as memorable as "(Don't Fear) The Reaper. BOC were the only band in their league, walking the line between AOR rock and metal, and offering such detailed narratives. Spectres also contains tunes that were ready-made for touring, which is what BOC did immediately after, resulting in the wildly successful live album Some Enchanted Evening. In sum, the only reason Spectres is not regarded as a classic is because it followed Agents of Fortune.

Agents of Fortune

If ever there were a manifesto for 1970s rock, one that prefigured both the decadence of the decade's burgeoning heavy metal and prog rock excesses and the rage of punk rock, "This Ain't the Summer of Love," the opening track from Agents of Forture, Blue Oyster Cult's fourth studio album, was it. The irony was that while the cut itself came down firmly on the hard rock side of the fence, most of the rest of the album didn't. The album yielded the band's biggest single with "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," a multi-textured, deeply melodic soft rock song with psychedelic overtones, written by guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser. The rest of the album is ambitious in that it all but tosses aside BOC's proto-metal stance and instead recontextualizes their entire stance. It's still dark, mysterious, and creepy, and perhaps even more so, it's still rooted in rock posturing and excess, but gone is the nihilistic biker boogie in favor of a more tempered -- indeed, nearly pop arena rock. Agents of Fortune is a solid record, albeit a startling one for fans of the band's earlier sound. It also sounds like one of restless inspiration, which is, in fact, what it turned out to be given the recordings that came after. It turned out to be BOC's last consistent effort until they released Fires of Unknown Origin in 1981.

On Your Feet or on Your Knees

On Your Feet or on Your Knees, Blue Oyster Cult's first live album, was also their first to peak inside the Top 40 best-sellers, which is more of an indication of the audience the group was building up through extensive touring than of its quality. Songs that had a tight, concentrated impact on studio albums got elongated here, and that impact was dissipated. And the song selection left a great deal to be desired if this was to be a fitting summation of the band's career so far. The album did mark the first commercial release of a version of "Buck's Boogie" as well as covers of the Yardbirds' "I Ain't Got You" and Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild."

Secret Treaties

While the speed-freak adrenaline heaviness and shrouded occult mystery of Tyranny and Mutation is the watermark for Blue Oyster Cult's creative invention, it is Secret Treaties that is widely and critically regarded as the band's classic. Issued in 1974, Secret Treaties is the purest distillation of all of BOC's strengths. Here the songs are expansive, and lush in their textures. The flamboyance is all here, and so are the overdriven guitar riffs provided by Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom. But there is something else, texturally, that moves these songs out from the blackness and into the shadows. It offers BOC a new depth and breadth. While elements of psychedelia have always been a part of the band's sound, it was always enfolded in proto-metal heaviness and biker boogie. Here, BOC created their own brand of heavy psychedelic noir to diversify their considerably aggressive attack. It's a breathless rock monolith that is all dark delight and sinister pleasure. While BOC went on to well-deserved commercial success with Agents of Fortune an album later, the freaky inspiration that was offered on their debut, and brought to shine like a black jewel on Tyranny and Mutation, was fully articulated as visionary on Secret Treaties.

Tyranny and Mutation

On Tyranny and Mutation, Blue Oyster Cult achieved the seemingly impossible: they brightened their sound and deepened their mystique. The band picked up their tempos considerably on this sophomore effort. The split imagery of Side One's thematic, "The Red" and Side Two's "The Black," and the flip-to-wig-city, dark conspiracy of Gawlik's cover art, and an entire concept was not only born and executed, it was received. The Black side of Tyranny and Mutation is its reliance on speed, punched-up big guitars, and throbbing riffs such as in "The Red and the Black," "O.D'd on Life Itself," "Hot Rails to Hell," and "7 Screaming Diz-Busters," all of which showcased the biker boogie taken to a dizzyingly extreme boundary; one where everything flies by in a dark blur, and the articulations of that worldview are informed as much by atmosphere as idea. This is screaming, methamphetamine-fueled rock & roll that was all about attitude, mystery, and a sense of nihilistic humor that was deep in the cuff. On the Red Side, beginning with the syncopated striations of "Baby Ice Dog," in which Allen Lanier's piano was as important as Buck Dharma's guitar throb, elements of ambiguity and bluesy swagger enter into the mix. Eric Bloom was the perfect frontman: he twirled the words around in his mouth before spitting them out with requisite piss-and-vinegar, and a sense of decadent dandy that underscored the music's elegance, as well as its power. He was at ease whether the topic was necromancy, S&M, apocalyptic warfare, or cultural dissolution. While BOC's Secret Treaties is widely recognized as the Cult's classic album, one would do well to consider Tyranny and Mutation in the same light.

Blue Oyster Cult

Two years before Kiss roared out of Long Island with its self-titled debut,Blue Oyster Cult, the latest incarnation of a band assembled by guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser and drummer Albert Bouchard in 1967, issued its dark, eponymously-titled heavy rock monolith. Managed and produced by the astronomically minded and conspiratorially haunted SandyPearlman, BOC rode the hot, hellbound rails of blistering hard rock as pioneered by Steppenwolf, fierce mutated biker blues, and a kind of dark psychedelia that could have only come out New York. The band's debut relied heavily on the lyrics of Pearlman and rock critic Richard Meltzer, as well as Pearlman's pioneering production that layered guitars in staggered sheets of sound over a muddy mix that kept Eric Bloom's delivery in the middle of the mix and made it tough to decipher. This was on purpose -- to draw the listener into the songs cryptically and ambiguously.