Year Of Metal #091: Blue Öyster Cult - Tyranny And Mutation
Blue Öyster Cult are a band double hexed by their one hit wonder status. Firstly there’s the song itself, “Don’t Fear The Reaper”, an undeniable heavy metal classic that serves as soundtrack shorthand for “it’s the ‘70s and we’re all on drugs” for films and telly to this day. Then there’s the Saturday Night Live sketch in which Chris Walken plays the cowbell-craving producer, which undoubtedly leaps straight to the minds of a lot of people when that sick riff starts up. But beyond that colossal single, BOC are a resilient cult act. They release sporadically but they tour plenty; to their core fans, they’re beloved to a degree I wasn’t aware.
Listening to their 1973 sophomore record, I get it. It’s not that I was particularly enamoured of Tyranny And Mutation, mind - more that it’s the kind of music that compels and even demands such fandom, namely shaggy, baggy, acid drenched jams. So long as the indulgence is tempered with enough fun, I’m pretty much always going to find that charming, and Blue Öyster Cult - possibly the first band to rock the superfluous umlaut - are big on the fun.
It’s not entirely goofy stuff on this record. “Hot Rails To Hell” shows they could tear it up pretty hard, with Albert Bouchard laying it in hard on the drums and some great guitar playing that flirts with atonality in the outro especially. The record’s rough and ready for the most part, but this track sounds all the better for the ragged aggression. They also pull out some proper swaggering guitar heroics in the sinister outro to the stupidly named “Mistress Of The Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)”; frustratingly, they save this particularly compelling and characterful playing for literally the last 20 seconds of the record. Just as you’re starting to vibe with it, whoops, it’s done.
For the most part, though, we’re into prog/acid jazz territory. Side one closer "7 Screaming Diz-Busters" is as goofy as it gets from the name on down. It’s a restless seven minute composition that won’t stop shifting from one daffy mode to another. It’s a bit like Love but without the sinister edge Arthur Lee et al gleaned from the curdling days of the Summer of Love. The BOC lot seem like those lucky hippies who had the constitution to survive the ‘60s unscathed, and still know how to have a good time.
It seems that, as the ‘70s wore on, the band focussed more on the heavier, more radio friendly tunes with banging riffs and sensible structures, rather than lengthy, structurally complex jams with insane names. That no doubt put them in good stead for the most lucrative stage of their career and produced their immortal hit. There’s no shame in being a one hit wonder, of course: it means you had a hit, and did these guys ever have a hit.
But I’ll bet if you go see BOC at some cool old theatre or at a state fair or wherever these grizzled dudes ply their trade these days, the best sounding stuff is the kind of material we hear on this album. They sound like crumpled old rockers even in ‘73, and Father Time has no doubt had his cruel way with them in the interim, but rocking out on these kinds of ridiculous, indulgent tunes is the kind of thing that keeps you young, and keeps your band together.
