Blue Öyster Cult – Blue Öyster Cult (1972/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Blue Öyster Cult – Blue Öyster Cult (1972/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:42 minutes | 823 MB | Genre: Rock, Hard Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Blue Öyster Cult is the eponymous debut studio album by the American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released on January 16, 1972 by Columbia Records. The album featured songs such as “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll”, “Stairway to the Stars”, and “Then Came the Last Days of May”, all of which the band still plays regularly during its concerts. Despite positive reviews, the album failed to chart for some time before finally cracking the Billboard 200 on May 20, 1972, peaking at No. 172.Blue Öyster Cult toured with artists such as The Byrds, Alice Cooper and the Mahavishnu Orchestra to support the album.

Two years before Kiss roared out of Long Island with its self-titled debut, Blue Öyster Cult, the latest incarnation of a band assembled by guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser and drummer Albert Bouchard in 1967, issued its dark, eponymously-titled heavy rock monolith. Managed and produced by the astronomically minded and conspiratorially haunted Sandy Pearlman, BÖC rode the hot, hellbound rails of blistering hard rock as pioneered by Steppenwolf, fierce mutated biker blues, and a kind of dark psychedelia that could have only come out New York. The band’s debut relied heavily on the lyrics of Pearlman and rock critic Richard Meltzer, as well as Pearlman’s pioneering production that layered guitars in staggered sheets of sound over a muddy mix that kept Eric Bloom’s delivery in the middle of the mix and made it tough to decipher. This was on purpose – to draw the listener into the songs cryptically and ambiguously. From the opener, “Transmaniacon MC,” the listener knew something very different was afoot. This is dark, amphetamine-fueled occult music that relied on not one, but three guitars – Bloom and keyboardist Allen Lanier added their own parts to Roeser’s incessant riffing: a barely audible upright piano keeping the changes rooted in early rock and the blues, and a rhythm attack by Bouchard and his brother Joe on bass that was barely contained inside the tune’s time signature. From the next track on “I’m on the Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep,” elliptical lyrics talked about “the red and the black,” while darkening themselves with stunning riffs and crescendos that were as theatrical as they were musical, and insured the Cult notice among the other acts bursting out of the seams of post-’60’s rock. Other standouts include the cosmic “Stairway to the Stars,” the boogie rave-up “Before the Kiss, a Redcap,” that sounded like a mutant Savoy Brown meeting Canned Heat at Altamont. But it is on “Cities on Flame With Rock & Roll,” that the Cult’s sinister plan for world domination is best displayed. From its knotty, overdriven riff to its rhythm guitar vamp, Vox organ shimmer, its crash cymbal ride and plodding bass and drum slog through the changes – not to mention its title – it is the ultimate in early metal anthems. Add to this the swirling quizzicality of “Workshop of the Telescopes” that lent the band some of its image cred.

Tracklist:

01. Blue Öyster Cult – Transmaniacon MC (03:20)
02. Blue Öyster Cult – I’m On the Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep (03:10)
03. Blue Öyster Cult – Then Came the Last Days of May (03:30)
04. Blue Öyster Cult – Stairway to the Stars (03:42)
05. Blue Öyster Cult – Before the Kiss, a Redcap (04:57)
06. Blue Öyster Cult – Screams (03:10)
07. Blue Öyster Cult – She’s as Beautiful as a Foot (02:56)
08. Blue Öyster Cult – Cities On Flame with Rock and Roll (04:02)
09. Blue Öyster Cult – Workshop of the Telescopes (04:00)
10. Blue Öyster Cult – Redeemed (03:51)

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