Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: October 9, 2020
Production: Buck Dharma, Eric Bloom & Richie Castellano
Album length: 61:15 min
Genre: Heavy Metal / Hard Rock / Art Rock
Rating: 8.0/10
“The Symbol Remains” is the fifteenth studio album from the long-running American eclectic hard rockers/metalheads Blue Öyster Cult, and the follow-up to “Curse of the Hidden Mirror” (2001, RockLine review), which came out almost twenty years ago, marking the longest gap between two studio albums in the history of this cult band. The album title comes from the lyrics of “Shadow of California,” a song off “The Revolution By Night” (1983). It’s also the first studio album since “Club Ninja” (1985, RockLine review) without the late keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Allan Lanier, and the studio debut for two band members who have by now been around for ages: keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Richie Castellano and drummer Jules Radino. Castellano also helped produce the album, teaming up with founding members Eric Bloom (guitar/vocals) and Donald Roeser (guitar/vocals), better known as Buck Dharma.
According to Bloom, the band felt no need to make a new studio album until a few years ago. The creative process behind “The Symbol Remains” was heavily shaped by the death of longtime Blue Öyster Cult collaborator, former manager and producer Sandy Pearlman, who passed away in 2016, since the guy was a huge treasure trove of ideas and concepts for many years. On “The Symbol Remains,” Eric and Buck got a lot of help from Castellano with the songwriting and lead vocals, while the well-known American fantasy novelist and screenwriter John Shirley, probably best known for writing the screenplay for the movie ‘The Crow,’ and who they’ve worked with before, co-wrote two of the songs. The lyrics on “The Symbol Remains” range from classic Blue Öyster Cult themes like alien conspiracy theories and H.P. Lovecraft’s dark fantasies to far more banal stuff like internet memes and run-ins with femmes fatales.
The opener “That Was Me,” a traditionally hard-hitting start with a particularly furious Eric on lead vocals, features founding drummer Albert Bouchard, who in recent years has been playing Blue Öyster Cult and Alice Cooper classics with his own band, which includes his brother Joe and original Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway. Albert left Blue Öyster Cult back in 1981, but it’s still nice to see him working with Eric and Buck again after all this time.
The solid opening effort is followed by Buck’s “Box in My Head,” which is about winning over a femme fatale. It has good potential, but thanks to a somewhat lukewarm chorus it unfortunately never grows into yet another melancholic Blue Öyster Cult classic with Buck on lead vocals. Generally speaking, Buck’s songs with his lead vocals this time around are a bit of a letdown compared to what we’re used to from him. The most interesting of the bunch is “Nightmare Epiphany,” which subtly blends Buck’s superb vocal performance, seductive guitar harmonies, tasteful piano passages and a bouncy rhythm.
The decent but unexciting “Tainted Blood,” which adds a pinch of AOR to the classic hard rock elements, brings a welcome breath of fresh air through Castellano’s lead vocals, along with a slightly different vocal dynamic from what we were used to on previous albums by the musical ‘agents in black.’ Another Castellano vocal turn that works nicely is “The Machine,” one of the album’s better moments, while “Edge of the World,” which is about an alien conspiracy theory, features quality vocal harmonies with Eric on lead, hefty guitar passages and a memorable chorus, which is a pretty rare thing by “The Symbol Remains” standards.
“Train True (Lennie’s Song)” is a fairly typical Buck songwriting effort, with more bluesy elements than usual, and with its playful, galloping rhythms and slightly goofy lyrics you don’t need to take it too seriously. The classic hard rocker “The Return of St. Cecilia,” seasoned with Hammond organ sounds and mighty vocal harmonies, is another solid but not especially inspired Castellano composition with his vocals up front. Castellano drew inspiration for it from the ‘ancient’ song “St. Cecilia,” written in 1970, when Blue Öyster Cult were still called Stalk-Forrest Group and had no idea that big success was waiting for them under a new name just two years later.
“Stand And Fight,” with Eric on lead vocals, is the hardest-hitting track on “The Symbol Remains” and one of the few on it you could call classic heavy metal. Too bad the “stand and fight” chorus comes off as extremely clichéd and stereotypical, something that would suit some less-than-brilliant metal bands à la Manowar better, but Eric has made a few similar ‘Neanderthal’ calls to ‘metal brothers and sisters’ in the past, so it’s no big surprise. “Florida Man,” yet another melancholic Buck piece with untapped potential and a somewhat pale chorus, refers in its lyrics to the popular internet meme that first appeared in 2013.
After this kind of mediocrity, with the band seeming to have burned through its best ideas in the first half of “The Symbol Remains,” comes the convincingly best song on the album: “The Alchemist.” This ambitious track, with Eric on lead vocals, was inspired by the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft, the most ‘metal’ writer of the first half of the 20th century, and it’s what most fans were waiting for and expecting from this band for almost twenty years. This time Eric and his crew manage to create a genuine, complex Blue Öyster Cult classic by successfully building a dark atmosphere and drama, with an excellent vocal performance from Eric. The instrumental section is also there, by far the most convincing and interesting on this album, while the dark lyrics about an ancient curse add a lot to the song’s incredible mood.
“Secret Road” is one of the solid but not especially memorable Buck songs on the album, where the listener unfortunately keeps feeling that the ‘cherry on top’ is missing, the thing that would turn the song from average into great. A better central arrangement or a more interesting chorus would definitely have made this composition more competitive with Buck’s past Blue Öyster Cult classics. The spicy guitar solo at the end sadly isn’t enough to leave a better impression.
“There’s a Crime” is once again a somewhat ‘wilder’ hard rocker with a solid chorus, but as a whole it’s not among the more interesting tracks on “The Symbol Remains.” Buck already released the closing track “Fight” in embryonic form on SoundCloud back in 2015, but at the time it was a solo piece. Stylistically it’s a bit reminiscent of one of the songs from the previous album “Curse of the Hidden Mirror,” but it still belongs in the ‘solid’ category rather than the ‘excellent’ one.
“The Symbol Remains” is a perfectly decent album that’s worthy of the name of this cult band, but it’s nowhere near their best work, even though some fans’ expectations before its release were (too) high and also a little unrealistic. Eric, Buck and the other three members of the musical ‘agents in black’ have put together a good number of totally listenable, likable songs with no major quality slumps, but sadly only “The Alchemist” really stands out, and it already ranks among their classics. It’s obvious that, despite the quality help of the eager-to-prove-itself ‘younger musical generation’ that Richie Castellano belongs to, Eric and Buck have lost some of their former creative spark over the past two decades, which goes especially for Buck, who once practically couldn’t disappoint with his songs. Still, with “The Symbol Remains” the eternal hard rock/metal veterans have managed to make a thoroughly solid album that will satisfy, though not completely delight, most longtime fans, who had to wait almost twenty years for its release.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. That Was Me (3:18)
2. Box in My Head (3:46)
3. Tainted Blood (4:17)
4. Nightmare Epiphany (5:30)
5. Edge of the World (4:52)
6. The Machine (4:14)
7. Train True (Lennie’s Song) (3:57)
8. The Return of St. Cecilia (4:12)
9. Stand and Fight (4:48)
10. Florida Man (4:08)
11. The Alchemist (6:00)
12. Secret Road (5:24)
13. There’s a Crime (3:37)
14. Fight (3:12)
Lineup:
Eric Bloom – vocals, backing vocals, guitar, keyboards, synthesizers
Buck Dharma – guitar, vocals, backing vocals
Danny Miranda – bass guitar, backing vocals
Richie Castellano – keyboards, guitar, vocals, backing vocals
Jules Radino – drums, percussion
Guest musician:
Albert Bouchard – cowbell and backing vocals on track #1
