Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: 24.01.2020
Length: 68.05 min
Production: Eric Bloom & Buck Dharma
Genre: Hard Rock / Heavy Metal / Art Rock
Rating: 10 / 10
As everyone knows by now, this year promises the big comeback of probably the most rock’n’roll cult of all cults. The cult of the blue oyster! Blue Öyster Cult! After 19 years, they’re putting out a new studio album. Since moving over to Frontiers Music Srl., they’ve got a whole bunch of things going on to stir up interest in their name all over again, even though they don’t really need it. But there’s something. Their albums are brutally hard to find in a store on a physical format. Reissues, or releases that never existed before (three live documents), are definitely welcome on that front.
Blue Öyster Cult are a one-of-a-kind rock’n’roll original. Nobody else is like them. This is a band that made it clear with their 1970 debut that their musical philosophy was finely chiseled and their unique rock’n’roll attitude a rock-solid, tangible substance. The seventies were theirs, as they stacked superior albums one after another, and along with them stacked unforgettable classics and hits. Even though they never got the status they deserved for what they contributed to the face of rock’n’roll, with their often gloomy occultism, sci-fi themes, and visions of the apocalypse, in a constant “liaison with extraterrestrial intelligence,” Blue Öyster Cult were the band that served as one of the main inspirations for many early metal outfits at the start of the eighties, in developing a bigger dose of noise, punch, and brazen, speedy wildness in phrasing.
“Cult Classic” is really a compilation of newly recorded classic hits by the band, and it first came out, in its original form, in 1994. That compilation was later reissued under other names and with other covers. In 1998 it came out again as “Champions Of Rock,” and in 2004 as “E.T.I. Revisited.” What I have in front of me now is the third reissue, with remastered sound. That is, a sonic update done by Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom, while the cover stays the same as the original.
In 1994 the band picked a selection of hits and played them again. So in spirit, they enriched and freshened them up. They stretched the arrangements out some more, and the biggest winners were definitely Buck Dharma’s guitar acrobatics. At that time Blue Öyster Cult were lined up as Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma, Allen Lanier (all three original members), with Jon Rogers (bass) and Chuck Burgi (drums) holding down the rhythm section. What really fascinates is the realization that the album feels like a brand new studio effort. Sonically the songs have a logical kinship, since they come from the same studio and the same time. The band also toned down the “evolutionary deviations” between them, even though most of the songs come from the albums “Secret Treaties” (1974) and “Agents Of Fortune” (1976). The musicality the band develops is fantastic, and even in the extended passages, packed with solo seasoning, Dharma squeezes an incredible musical payoff out of the phrases. Buck’s Boogie, a staple from the live document “On Your Feet Or On Your Knees” (1975), says it best, with the guitarist striking a one-of-a-kind balance between sparkling soloing and keeping the musicality high on tightly structured guitar phrasing. The vocal contrast between Bloom and Dharma is an essential building block of the big mood swings from song to song, which loosens up and livens up the band’s basic stylistic stance. O.D.’d on Life Itself is a Bloom song, and it couldn’t be any other way, just as Don’t Frear the Reaper is a Buck Dharma song. And between the two songs lies an extraordinary compositional contrast.
In 1994 this release sort of announced that Blue Öyster Cult, whose albums in the eighties chased more radio-friendly sounds (“Club Ninja,” “Imaginos”), were slowly heading back to the cradle of their birth and the renewed search for the primal essence of rock’n’roll originality. Four years later, the album “Heaven Forbid” confirmed it. “Cult Classics” is an effort that is basically a compilation. Still, with the songs in their sonic makeover, enriched with extra arrangement finesse and a generous bag of soloing mischief, it feels like a new album, even though it really isn’t. “Cult Classic” is also a great jumping-off point if you want to dive into the band’s body of work with a clear conscience, provided you don’t know it yet, of course. And believe me. If you happen to be in that league of “non-knowers,” you urgently need to wash that sin off yourself as soon as possible.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Don’t Fear The Reaper
2. E.T.I. (Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
3. M.E. 262
4. This Ain’t The Summer Of Love
5. Burning For You
6. O.D.’D On Life Itself
7. Flaming Telepaths
8. Godzilla
9. Astronomy
10. Cities On Flame With Rock ‘N’ Roll
11. Harvester Of Eyes
12. Buck’s Boogie
13. Don’t Fear The Reaper (Tv Mix)
14. Godzilla (Tv Mix)
Lineup:
Eric Bloom – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser – guitar, vocals, keyboards
Allen Lanier – keyboards, guitar, backing vocals
Jon Rogers – bass, backing vocals
Chuck Burgi – drums, percussion, backing vocals
