The Essential Blue Oyster Cult - Blue Öyster Cult

Blue Oyster Cult - Blue Oyster Cult

Blue Öyster Cult s first album is more raw and primitive than its successors, but remains a notable entry into the early heavy metal/hard rock canon with its American slant on bands such as Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, bands whose styles are quoted in songs like Stairway to the Stars and Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll respectively. With less keyboard presence than their later, more acclaimed and eventually more commercial albums, this is that little bit darker and more satisfying to hard rock fans who perhaps found the band s later progressive tendencies a bit too much to stomach. That s not to say that this is overly simplistic and lacking in grand ideas, its ...

Secret Treaties - Blue Oyster Cult

Blue Öyster Cult s third album Secret Treaties has been called a progressive rock masterpiece and an early heavy metal classic, and although it deserves these accolades to some extent, it s more of a slightly diluted middle-ground between the two. It s certainly an improvement over the somewhat muddled Tyranny and Mutation, and the most creative album they would produce for some time after, and once again Buck Dharma leads the way with his inspired guitar playing. There s a perfect balance maintained here between heaviness and melody, often within the same song, even if the "heaviness" is strictly in an early seventies sense, making songs like Subhuman ...

Spectres - Blue Oyster Cult

Following the success of their more pop-oriented Agents of Fortune, Blue Öyster Cult understandably furthered this style with the even blander Spectres, much to the chagrin of old-time fans but clearly the right career move at the time, from a purely financial perspective. The songs here are even softer than those on the previous year s release, and to make things more insulting, there are even a couple of anthems to rock - most notably the text-message-prophesying R.U. Ready 2 Rock - that couldn t sound less like an authentic rock song if they tried, complete with soft unison singing, an almost complete lack of guitars, and clichéd piano playing that I d be tempted ...