Blue Oyster Cult

Blue Oyster Cult started life as a tongue in cheek Heavy Metal band and soon overcame the parody to become one of the most influential bands around. To borrow from an interview in Sounds magazine from 1978 “We were a parody of the heavy metal beast and then turned into it … It was that we were sort of an inside joke to ourselves of what heavy metal really is, and yet we transcended the joke and became it.”
They were also superb musicians and perfectly capable of laying down some of the hardest sounds and most original songwriting in the genre.

This collection contains eight live tracks and five original studio numbers. The live tracks taken from three different live albums – the double live ‘On Your Feet Or on Your Knees’, ‘Extraterrestrial Live’ and a great version of ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ from the ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ album.

To BOC cognoscenti, the lyrics have often had a ridiculous edge – ‘Dominance And Submission’. ‘7 Screaming Diz-Busters’ etc – but other songs conjure up seriously dark and uncomfortable images – ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’, ‘Black Blade’ and others.
This collection manages to bring out most of both elements of the band and adds in a few band and fan favourites as well.

The live version of ‘Godzilla’ is arch and pokes deeply into the cheek, but they have great fun with it and the audience generally enjoy the excesses.
‘Me262’ is a great rock riff and the live version has amazing pace and power,
The outlier from ‘The Metal Years’ is, of course, ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’, but it is almost an unwritten rule that it be included. Thankfully, the producers of this collection have included the live version from ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and it sits well.

As an introduction to Blue Oyster Cult, this is a pretty good collection but diehards will already have every track here.