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slowbellie's take on: blue oyster cult

Blue Oyster Cult is perhaps best summed up in the words of rock critic William Ruhlmann, when he described them as “the thinking man’s heavy metal group.” This defining trait is perhaps verified when you consider the groups more contemporary antecedents, with bands such as Queens of the Stone Age and Alice in Chains citing BOC as a major influence.

Formed in 1967 by a collective group of students from Long Island’s Stony Brook College, the band that would become Blue Oyster Cult was spearheaded by Sandy Pearlman and Richard Meltzer. The two would later become rock critics. Initially a purely instrumental group, their manager, Eric Bloom, would come to serve as lead vocalist by 1970.

The Cult possessed a sound that could be described as eerie, haunting, and melodic yet aggressive. Slow tempos, accentuated bass, and screaming guitar solos provided a heavy-metal intensity.

Following in the footsteps of early metal bands such as Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, BOC’s sound was unique from any metal band before it due to the icy, menacing ambience of the music (or “spook-rock”). The band also had a tendency to take on a soft rock sound (eg. “Don’t Fear the Reaper”) despite the group’s strictly pro-metal stance on their music.

They found critical acclaim as well as a mainstream listening audience with their third studio album, Secret Treaties. It wasn’t, however, until their fifth album - Agents of Fortune - that the group would attain it’s well deserved platinum status. With the written help of poet-turned- rocker, Patti Smith, Agents of Fortune included such hits as “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, (the bands biggest single), and “This Ain’t the Summer of Love”. As critic Thomas Jurek describes it, “This Ain’t the Summer of Love” is a “manifesto for 1970’s rock, one that prefigured both the decadence of the decade’s burgeoning heavy metal and prog rock excesses and the rage of punk rock.”

Spanning three decades, BOC’s heavy, theatrical style would lead them to be featured on John Carpenter’s cult horror flick, Halloween, as well as Steven King’s television mini-series which was a perfect fit with their spine-tingling rock. More recently, the group’s music reached a whole new generation of hard rock fans when Metallica covered BOC’s classic “Astronomy” for their best selling album, Garage Inc. Blue Oyster Cult have also released a few best-of albums that are well worth a listen, including, 1998-99’s Super Hits and Don’t Fear the Reaper: The Best Of.

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