Blue Oyster Cult - Tyranny and Mutation (1973) (Remaster Edit 2001)

Blue Oyster Cult - Tyranny and Mutation (1973) (Remaster Edit 2001)

This is another of the great remastered reissues of the first four Blue Öyster Cult albums which Sony put out on the Columbia/Legacy label. They include lyrics, photos, and liner notes by Lenny Kaye. They also contain additional tracks, and on this release that includes three live cuts and one outtake from the album session. In addition the albums have been digitally remastered and sound better than ever. "Tyranny and Mutation" was recorded in 1972 and released in February of 1973. It was produced by Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman. This remastered CD was released on June 26th of 2001. Bruce Dickinson produced the remastered versions. One odd note about this album is that is their only album where the group is listed as The Blue Öyster Cult.
The album was originally going to be titled "The Red and The Black", and each side retains the subtitle from that original plan. The first four tracks (side one on the LP) are called "The Black" (physical, sensual, aural activation). It opens with "The Red & The Black", which is a new version of "I'm On the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" from their first album. This version is heavier and has more drive to it, and it is this version that appears on two of their live albums and that they still play today. It continues with "O.D.'d On Life Itself", "Hot Rails To Hell", and "7 Screaming Diz-Busters". All of these are regular concert fare for the group, and all are hard driving rock.
The next four tracks (side two on the LP) were titled "The Red" (phantasmagorical id-teasers and supernatural beings). It opens with "Baby Ice Dog" which is the first collaboration that the group did with Patti Smith. That is followed by "Wings Wetted Down", "Teen Archer", and "Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)". These pieces are much different than those on side one. They are more mysterious and melodic then the pieces in "The Black". My personal favorites on this album are the closing pieces to each section.
The remastered CD has an additional section which is the bonus tracks. There is a live version of "Cities on Flame with Rock And Roll" from a promotion album called "Blue Öyster Cult Bootleg EP" (the other songs from that release are available on the "Workshop of the Telescopes" compilation CD). The next track is a studio outtake from the recording sessions called "Buck's Boogie"; the live version appears on "On Your Feet or on Your Knees". The final two bonus tracks are live versions of "7 Screaming Diz-Busters" and "O.D.'d on Life Itself", which come from a "bootleg" made by the band to give to friends and family which was titled "Blue Öyster Cult in the West".
The group consists of Eric Bloom (vocals, stun guitar, synthesizers), Albert Bouchard (drums, vocals), Joe Bouchard (bass, vocals, keyboards), Allen Lanier (keyboards, rhythm guitar), and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser (guitar, vocals). This album is a solid four stars, and as with many of their albums, it improves each time you listen to it...m. Mandel

On Tyranny and Mutation, the Blue Öyster Cult achieved the seemingly impossible: They brightened their sound and deepened their mystique. The band picked up its tempos considerably on this sophomore effort, and producers Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman added a lightning bolt of high-end sonics to their frequency range. Add to this the starling lyrical contributions of Pearlman, rock critic Richard Meltzer, and poet cum rocker Patti Smith (who was keyboardist Allen Lanier's girlfriend at the time), 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 Red 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 and roll that was all about attitude, mystery, and a sense of nihilistic humor that was deep in the cuff. Here was the crossroads: the middle of rock's Bermuda triangle where BÖC marked the black cross of the intersection between New York's other reigning kings of mystery theater and absurd excess: the Velvet Underground and Kiss -- two years before their first album -- and the " 'it's all F#$&%* so who gives a rat's ass" attitude that embodied the City's punk chic half-a-decade later. 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. By the LP's end, on "Mistress of the Salmon Salt," Bloom was being covered over by a kind of aggressively architected psychedelia that kept the '60s at bay while embracing the more aggressive, tenser nature of the times. While BÖC'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. On the 2001 remastered version, Legacy added live versions of "Cities on Flame With Rock & Roll," "7 Screaming Diz-Busters," and "O.D.'d on Life Itself," as well as a studio read of Buck Dharma's "Buck's Boogie," but they add little to the power and sinister majesty of the original album...T. Jurek

320 @
152 MB

Tracklist:

01 The Red and The Black 4:24
02 O.D.'D on Life Itself 4:47
03 Hot Rails to Hell 5:11
04 7 Screaming Diz-Busters 7:01
05 Baby Ice Dog 3:28
06 Wings Wetted Down 4:12
07 Teen Archer 3:57
08 Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl) 5:08
09 Cities on Flame With Rock & Roll Live / Bonus 4:44
10 Buck's Boogie previously unreleased / Bonus / Studio Version 5:21
11 7 Screaming Diz-Busters Live / previously unreleased / Bonus 14:00
12 O.D.'D on Life Itself Live / previously unreleased / Bonus 4:52

Blue Oyster Cult - Spectres (1977) (Remaster Edit 2007)

Blue Oyster Cult - Spectres (1977) (Remaster Edit 2007)

Blue Öyster 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 the Cult 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." It's not the only big number here either: "Goin' Through the Motions" and the truly spooky "I Love the Night" by Buck Dharma also scored. The former track is a wonderful blend of Tommy James & the Shondells, Boston, and Mott the Hoople's roots rock glam attack. Written by Eric Bloom and Ian Hunter, it's a stunning single. It sounds less like the Cult than anything they'd recorded, but as a classic rock & roll single it succeeds in spades. And "I Love the Night" (with its guitar part resembling "Reaper" for a moment) is one of rock & roll's truly strange and seductive love songs. There is more spook and darkness here, of course, in the album's closer, "Nosferatu." As a closer, "I Love the Night" may have been a better choice, but this track has all those layered harmonies, a reverbed piano, Dharma's power chords, and lyric fills that never lose their sense of menace and once more, a story. 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 the Cult 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. Other than the false funk of "Searchin' for Celine," it's flawless as a finely tuned tome that begins with sci-fi humor and ends with gothic horror -- all of which can be hummed to. [The Legacy edition of Spectres includes four previously unreleased bonus demos recorded during the album sessions. The hip thing is that these bonus cuts are really worth it and not add-ons from the dead-dogs file: the rocker "Dial M for Murder," the would-be single "Night Flyer," Albert Bouchard's "Please Hold," and a fun (and raw) cover of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby."]...T. Jurek

320 @
122 MB

Tracklist:

01 Godzilla 3:41
02 Golden Age of Leather 5:52
03 Death Valley Nights 4:08
04 Searchin' for Celine 3:36
05 Fireworks 3:12
06 R.U. Ready 2 Rock 3:44
07 Celestial the Queen 3:26
08 Goin' Through the Motions 3:12
09 I Love the Night 4:24
10 Nosferatu 5:27
11 Night Flyer - previously unreleased 3:49
12 Dial M for Murder - previously unreleased 3:11
13 Please Hold - previously unreleased 2:47
14 Be My Baby - previously unreleased 3:01

Blue Oyster Cult - Secret Treaties (1974) (Remaster Edit 2001)

Blue Oyster Cult - Secret Treaties (1974) (Remaster Edit 2001)

While the speed-freak adrenaline heaviness and shrouded occult mystery of Tyranny and Mutation is the watermark for Blue Öyster 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 BÖC'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. Perhaps it's the bottom-heavy mix by producer and lyricist Sandy Pearlman, with Allen Lanier's electric piano and Joe Bouchard's bass coming to rest in an uneasy balance with the twin-guitar attack. Perhaps it's in the tautness of songwriting and instrumental architectures created by drummer Albert Bouchard, Bloom, and Don Roeser (Buck Dharma). Whatever it is, it offers the Cult 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, BÖC created their own brand of heavy psychedelic noir to diversify their considerably aggressive attack. Listen to "Subhuman" or "Dominance and Submission." Their minor chord flourishes and multi-tracked layered guitars and Bouchard's constantly shimmering cymbals and snare work (he is the most underrated drummer in rock history) and elliptical lyrics -- that Pearlman put out in front of the mix for a change -- added to the fathomless dread and mystery at the heart of the music. Elsewhere, on "Cagey Cretins" and "Harvester of Eyes" (both with lyrics by critic Richard Meltzer), the razor-wire guitar riffs were underscored by Lanier's organ, and their sci-fi urgency heightened by vocal harmonies. But it is on "Flaming Telepaths," with its single-chord hypnotic piano line that brings the lyric "Well, I've opened up my veins too many times/And the poison's in my heart in my heart and in my mind/Poison's in my bloodstream/Poison's in my pride/I'm after rebellion/I'll settle for lives/Is it any wonder that my mind is on fire?" down into the maelstrom and wreaks havoc on the listener. It's a stunner, full of crossing guitar lines and an insistent, demanding rhythmic throb. The set closes with the quark strangeness of "Astronomy," full of melancholy, dread, and loss that leaves the listener unsettled and in an entirely new terrain, having traveled a long way from the boasting rockery of "Career of Evil" that began the journey. It's a breathless rock monolith that is all dark delight and sinister pleasure. The 2001 remastered edition includes three unreleased cuts from the same sessions that focus on the rave-up side of the band's temperament but were incompatible with the album's aesthetic. Also included is the 45 version of "Career of Evil" and its B-side, a studio version of the band's cover of Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild." While the Cult 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...T. Jurek

320 @
128 MB

Tracklist:

01 Career of Evil 4:00
02 Subhuman 4:38
03 Dominance and Submission 5:22
04 ME 262 4:47
05 Cagey Cretins 3:16
06 Harvester of Eyes 4:41
07 Flaming Telepaths 5:19
08 Astronomy 6:28
09 Boorman the Chauffer previously unreleased / Bonus 3:12
10 Mommy previously unreleased / Bonus 3:32
11 Mes Dames Sarat previously unreleased / Bonus 4:06
12 Born to Be Wild Bonus / Non LP Single (Single B-Side) / Version 3:40
13 Career of Evil Bonus / Single Version 3:00

Blue Oyster Cult - Agents Of Fortune (1976) (Remaster Edit 2001)

Blue Oyster Cult - Agents Of Fortune (1976) (Remaster Edit 2001)

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 Fortune, Blue Öyster Cult's fourth 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. Agents of Fortune was co-produced by longtime Cult record boss Sandy Pearlman, Murray Krugman, and newcomer David Lucas, and in addition, the band's lyric writing was being done internally with help from poet-cum-rocker Patti Smith (who also sings on "The Revenge of Vera Gemini"). Pearlman, a major contributor to the band's songwriting output, received a solitary credit while critic Richard Meltzer, whose words were prevalent on the Cult's previous outings, was absent. The album yielded the band's biggest single with "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," a multitextured, 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 the Cult'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 -- sound that gave Allen Lanier's keyboards parity with Dharma's guitar roar, as evidenced by "E.T.I.," "Debbie Denise," and "True Confessions." This is not to say that the Cult abandoned their adrenaline rock sound entirely. Cuts like "Tattoo Vampire" and "Sinful Love" have plenty of feral wail in them. The 2001 remastered edition contains four bonus cuts: an early version of "Fire of Unknown Origin" and unreleased demo versions of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," "Sally," and "Dance the Night Away." Ultimately, 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 the Cult's last consistent effort until they released Fire of Unknown Origin in 1981...T. Jurek

320 @
105 MB

Tracklist:

01 This Ain't the Summer of Love 2:20
02 True Confessions 2:56
03 (Don't Fear) The Reaper 5:08
04 E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) 3:42
05 The Revenge of Vera Gemini 3:52
06 Sinful Love 3:29
07 Tattoo Vampire 2:41
08 Morning Final 4:30
09 Tenderloin 3:39
10 Debbie Denise 4:13
11 Fire of Unknown Origin - previously unreleased 3:29
12 Sally - previously unreleased / Demo Version 2:39
13 (Don't Fear) The Reaper - previously unreleased / Demo Version 6:19
14 Dance the Night Away - previously unreleased / Demo Version 2:37