Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: March 6, 2020
Production: Buck Dharma
Album length:
Genre: Heavy Rock / Hard Rock
Rating: 8.0 / 10
Blue Öyster Cult are rock legends who played a major part, all through their seventies heyday, in the later development and explosion of heavy metal. Their 1976 album “Agents Of Fortune” is a cult classic today, the one that gave them their commercial breakthrough, riding mostly on the rock evergreen (Don’t Fear) The Reaper. It went platinum fast. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll classic and an album that should be part of the music collection in every household that gives a damn about good “heavy” rock.
So 2016 marked 40 years since the release of this album. Blue Öyster Cult are promising a new album this year. It’s been 19 years since the band’s last studio album, “The Curse of Hidden Mirror”. Unbelievable. What a time gap.
The band has switched over to the Italian label Frontiers Music Srl., which at the start of this March took care of two new Blue Öyster Cult releases, signaling that the “metal forefathers of days long past” are stretching their limbs again. The first of the two is a reissue of the otherwise excellent “Heaven Forbid”, originally released in 1998, now back on store shelves with remastered sound and a bonus track (a live version of In Thee). The same day also saw the release of a concert with which Blue Öyster Cult, as mentioned, marked the 40th anniversary of the album “Agents Of Steel”.
It was April 18, 2016, a Monday no less, so a regular working day, when the band played the entire “Agents Of Fortune” album in front of a handful of lucky chosen ones, from start to finish, at Red Studios in the middle of Hollywood (California, USA), with a whole army of cameramen filming the show, since it was being broadcast live on TV. Frontiers Music Srl. has now made sure that after almost four years this recording finally gets released on CD, DVD, Blu-ray and, new for the occasion, on good old vinyl too.
Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser and Eric Bloom remain the backbone of today’s Blue Öyster Cult, and thanks to that, even in the golden years of their career the band keeps all its credibility, its reason to exist, and the charm and appeal of seeing them live is nowhere near fading. They play in Europe little or hardly at all, but much more often at home, meaning on stages across the USA. Anyway. Buck and Eric are covered by a great crew of backing vocalists who also make up the rest of the instrumental lineup of the current incarnation of the band. They are: bassist Kasim Sulton, virtuoso wizard of a keyboardist and guitarist Richie Castellano, and drummer Jules Radino. Why I’m singling out the backing vocals, you’ve probably guessed already: Buck and Eric sound visibly worn and tired vocally, while the rest of the crew conjures up superb multi-part vocal harmonies, in whose shelter the two vocally fading uncles can stay safely stretched out the whole time. In fact, the only minus of this concert recording (or plus, depending on how you look at it) is the vocal performance of the two frontmen. The recording feels very authentic. That is, it hasn’t gone through much polishing or after-the-fact studio beautification, which is commendable, but you have to accept that it therefore carries a “bootleg” whiff.
For the band’s diehard fans this is an essential buy. All other sympathizers, who handle their bank cards more carefully and who know that the golden live days, which won’t come back, are already officially documented on other live releases by the band, will most likely wisely sit this one out, even though a special guest shows up on stage (as guitarist and additional vocalist): the band’s former drummer Albert Bouchard (the band fired him in 1982, before the recording of “The Revolution By Night” began).
The release of “40th Anniversary – Agents Of Fortune – Live 2016” is a welcome move in any case, if only because it arrives as a nice wake-up call that the iconic fossils of heavy rock aren’t done yet and are coming back (let’s hope soon) with the promised new studio album.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. This Ain’t The Summer Of Love
2. True Confessions
3. (Don’t Fear) The Reaper
4. E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)
5. The Revenge Of Vera Gemini
6. Sinful Love
7. Tattoo Vampire
8. Morning Final
9. Tenderloin
10. Debbie Denise
Lineup:
Eric Bloom – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser – guitar, vocals
Richie Castellano – guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Kasim Sulton – bass guitar, backing vocals
Jules Radino – drums, percussion
Guest musician:
Albert Bouchard – guitar, vocals
