Blue Öyster Cult
Tyranny and Mutation

THE REVIEW

Everyone (and I mean everyone) thinks that the main entities responsible for the birth of the Heavy Metal movement in the early seventies were the likes of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and even Led Zeppelin... Everyone (and I repeat: everyone) believes that music crossed paths with these groups and then, in one fell swoop, landed on the shores of Metal as we know it. Everyone (and unfortunately, I mean everyone) doesn't know or remember who did the dirty work... No one remembers who moved, away from the spotlight, to unwittingly create what can be considered the connecting link between the Hard-Rock of the aforementioned bands and the classic Heavy Metal that flourished at the end of the seventies with bands like Judas Priest, Motorhead, etc... (from which everything else developed), becoming (unwittingly) the father of the movement: Blue Oyster Cult.

To use a "vegetable" metaphor, if you consider the Metal world (and all "hard" music) as a tree, where the branches are the main genres (heavy, thrash, epic, black, death, power, gothic, etc...) and the leaves represent the subgenres (acoustic, symphonic, viking, brutal, jazz majestic amniotic rebel nu with cream, etc...), B.O.C. is, rightfully, the trunk of that tree (I leave the roots to your imagination, but I recommend rereading the start of the review).

A band that so much influenced the eighties metal scene, that practically every band covered something from them: from Judas Priest to Metallica, from Iron to Slayer to Iced Earth.
Born in New York, at the end of the sixties, from the restless and clouded mind of a dubious music journalist-critic named Sandy Pearlman (a man with strange ideas about life, the occult, and music), and formed by a strange amalgamation of intellectuals and bikers far removed from the "positive musical vibrations" of the previous decade, they were among the first to bring together in a single musical container the romantic and emotional pathos of Rock-Blues with definitely horrific themes and atmospheres based on alien nightmares and "urban" damnations... All paired with controlled experimentation that had nothing to do with the prog-rock of the time but pointed in the opposite direction: to speed up, darken, and thicken the music, without instrumental complications or dizzying virtuosity, but expressing variety without falling into complexity (executive).

In conclusion, you might say, they did what the Anglo-Saxon Black Sabbath had already done (Horror themes and "doom" atmospheres of the "Dark-Rock Band")... But the difference is as obvious as it is cryptic: while in England Iommi and Ozzy "amuse" themselves by talking about death and evil linked to the (not even too hidden) satanic world, the Blue Oyster Cult begins to talk about evil as the most mysterious and uncontrolled side of life, the one in contact with unspecified "alien" presences, trying to understand their possible contaminations on peaceful daily life (basically, stuff that would give chills to the toughest of rockers), directing the "dark and hard" music to an adult audience and thus less "youthful" and extremist.

If only one adjective could be used for B.O.C.'s music, I would undoubtedly use: VISIONARY.

With B.O.C. HardRock transcends the "party" boundaries of the seventies and embraces unspeakable and surreal mirages of restlessness and "real fantasy", yet without typical adolescent excesses. In 1973, after a much more than "psychedelic" self-titled debut, the "Cult of the Blue Oyster" gives us what I personally consider the first properly called Heavy Metal album in history... The title? "Tyranny And Mutation", as if to say: Law and Chaos; Order and Instinct; The Red and The Black (because there's nothing candid in B.O.C.), like the two parts of the album (curiously, the term Heavy Metal is used for the first time to indicate the Rock of Blue Oyster Cult and Iron Butterfly).

An innovative and deviant album, sinister in every note and disorienting in its never-ending dramatic-theatrical depth. An album that talks about things man would be better off not knowing, but speaks about them with the irony typical of those who've always lived in the abyss. An album that thrives on metropolitan disturbances and black magic mixed into a cocktail of disconcerting relevance even today. The music contained in the album is the simplest alchemy between powerful and fast guitar riffs (offered by the guitar duo Eric Bloom and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, the latter a true master on par with Blackmore and Page), doom atmospheres given by the skillful and innovative keyboard work of Allen Lanier (who in many cases also becomes the third guitarist, the first instance of three guitars in rock history), a dynamic, genius, and powerful rhythm section (for the time) aided by the mad-bass of Joseph Bouchard and the genius drumming of Albert Bouchard (the two are brothers and the latter would marry a certain Patti Smith who would write some pieces for the band she was initially supposed to join) and the sharp and sinister singing of Eric Bloom himself (a sort of Robert Plant with hoarseness).

Everything is frighteningly fresh and new... The variety within the tracks, the evocative power, the fantastic and everyday atmospheres at the same time, the lightness with which themes like evil, pain, and madness are tackled... As if to demonstrate that it is enough to look around to understand that we can’t fear what has always surrounded us.

From the stunning cover, you can tell where the music will head: a squared and hollow pyramid that, resting on a chessboard symbolizing good and evil, tends toward the group's "emblem" (Saturn), which dominates the center and emits black and white waves testifying to the alternation between human order and cosmic chaos.

The album is full of unreachable flights:
it starts with the fast and violent Rock’ n’ Roll of "The Red & The Black" (an example of how rock ’n’ roll can be damnably evil) and moves to the experimental and unleashed Hard Boogie of "O.D.'d On Life Itself" which, with its increasing surge, pre-empts much of the glam that would triumph in the eighties. The lights go out and the smell of sulfur becomes unbearable... Here comes the extremely violent "Hot Rails To Hell"... What to say about this song... I believe Glen Tipton and Rob Halford (future masterminds of Judas Priest) listened to it until exhaustion. Even today, it seems like facing something uncontrollable... Malevolent atmospheres hiding to ambush you ("Wings Wetted Down"), “sexual” tensions on the edge of decency ("Baby Ice Dog", written by Patti Smith), unexpected bursts of inexplicable repressed violence (the same "Hot Rails To Hell" or the dark and tense "7 Screaming Diz-Busters") that pre-empt, by almost 10 years, much of what would be called Thrash Metal, apparent serene ambiguity that dominates the doom-laden "Teen Archer" and an alien atmosphere that overshadows all and everyone like the invisible controller of an Orwellian nightmare.

A work full of “atmospheric grandeur” and serious epicness, the deviant and perfect combination between nightmare and reality, between fantasy and daily life, between melody and hardness... In short... What Grunge would try to do almost twenty years later (without fully succeeding). An album that has marked the history of Rock and Metal in an indelible way... An album that sounds fresh and current like 30 years ago... An album that manages to narrate the horror of the world with an incredibly adult and mature language... And in a period like this, where many think metal is music for kids or for immature losers, it would be good to remember it (and to listen to it again).

5 stars are not enough.