Album Review: Blue Oyster Cult - "The Symbol Remains"

 

Unfairly remembered on these shores as a mostly being a one-hit wonder (Don't Fear The Reaper just in case you've been living in a cave for the last 45 years), the truth is that Blue Oyster Cult are a band with a very worthy back catalogue and, back in their 1970s prime, could kick up a hell of a racket in their day. Put it this way, their tag as the American Black Sabbath definitely wasn't unwarranted hype as anyone who's heard This Ain't The Summer Of Love, Astronomy or Godzilla will tell you.

All of which is very well and good of course but the 1970s were a long time ago and there's a big question hanging over whether BOC have still got it now. However, as the sinister riff of That Was Me kicks in to open this album, the signs are encouraging. Box In My Head sees them veering over to their more melodic side (think a 21st century version of Burnin' For You).

Essentially The Symbol Remains is exactly what you'd want from a Blue Oyster Cult album in this day and age and takes the strongest elements of their classic sound before bringing them up to date for 2020. So we get the sinister Then Came The Last Days Of May slowie that is Tainted Blood through the swaggering riffs of Stand And Fight and Edge of the World (with the attendant conspiracy lyrics) to the epic piano-led apocalyptic odes of Nightmare Epiphany and The Alchemist and the Thin Lizzy style straight up rock anthem Return of St Cecilia with some good guitar work from long standing guitarist Buck Dharma.

There's a few curveballs here too - Train True explodes from a mid-paced opening to a turbo-charged Chuck Berry style riff-fest and There's A Crime almost goes into Dead Boys style punk territory but for the most part this is BOC sticking to what they do best and it's no worse for it. Given how many bands of their era seem content to simply phone it in on the revival circuit, it's to the band's credit that they're still putting out credible new material some forty odd years into their career. Good stuff.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A brief return from the dead...

Image
  Yup, we're back. Don't all get excited at once. I’d been toying with the idea of doing an end of year list again this year and after a lot of umming and aahing eventually decided to go for it. As with last year, inevitably there were bumps along the way. As of the start of December, I thought this list would be around 40 albums but inevitably reading other people’s lists pointed me towards a bunch of stuff that had passed me by earlier in the year. Plus of course there’s always a few teasing buggers who put stuff out at the last possible moment. So 40 became 50 which became 60 which finally became 70. You lucky people. Actually though, reading through this list, the main thing that strikes me is that I think this might be the most musically varied end of year list that Nite Songs has ever done. From gentle acoustics through acclaimed indie veterans to punk thrash and good old fashioned scuzzy rock ‘n’ roll via some decidedly unexpected diversions (industrial folk music? Check...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure, ...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #19 - The Dictators - "Go Girl Crazy!" (1975)

Image
  "Set me free, I might know better when I'm older but till then..."  - The Dictators  - Weekend By some distance the oldest album we've featured in this column so far, I very nearly went for the Dictators' 2001 comeback album DFFD  for this feature similar to what I did with the New York Dolls GDR article a couple of weeks back but after a bit of umming and ahhing, I decided it really had to be the group's 1975 debut Go Girl Crazy!  just because it's arguably the great trailblazing US punk album that everyone's forgotten about. I guess that you could almost say that if the Ramones were the Sex Pistols of US punk then the Dictators were kind of like the Eddie & The Hot Rods in that they crashlanded just that one year too early to really reap the punk whirlwind when it took off in 1976-77 but if you listen to Go Girl Crazy! , it's got the fingerprints of a lot of bands who'd come along soon afterwards on it, especially da Bruddas. The big ...
Read more