CLUB NINJA

I remember well that day in the '80s when I walked into Great American Music, a music store at the local mall near my house. From the first moment I spotted the display for the new Club Ninja album, it was an immediate sinking feeling of, "Oof, that's a terrible album cover." I bought the album anyway and took it home, hoping it was just a rare miss for a band that usually has cool cover art. Nope. The music was even worse than the cover. Total and complete---well, I won't finish that here, but my teenage vernacular at the time was less than delicate. Lest ye think I am just engaging in flagrant '80s-hate, that is just not the case. I loved The Revolution By Night, and I believe that Rev by Night was just as good as the two beloved '80s BOC releases that preceded it. I think people who bash Rev By Night are missing the boat. But on this album, Club Ninja, I've no choice but to admit the obvious that others have. It was rock bottom.

This is not a talent issue. These are fine players, with Roeser in particular singing and playing as well as ever. This is a songwriting issue, a lack of quality control, a collapse in confidence and execution, and a meddling by record company suits. All of the above. I just can't get over the disinterest I have in these songs even all these years later. I've been playing this album over and over the past few months trying to figure out what my teenage ears missed, but aside from lots of polish, there is simply nothing here that grabs me, nothing that moves me, and nothing that does what BOC has always done...excite me! From the beginning right up through Revolution By Night, this was a band that could excite me and were a joy to listen to. Every album had magic, humor, creativity, and mood. We felt a special camaraderie as their fans. But it was obviously time for a long break to recharge and regroup.

Club Ninja is just the most jarring contrast in quality, worse than other low-rated peer releases like Passionworks, Invisible Touch, or Face Dances. For all of those reviewers out there who complained about the "misstep toward commercialism" regarding Agents/Mirrors/Spectres, I would say at least those albums had some passion, some color, some gasps of creativity and mischief. Nothing of the sort can be said about Club Ninja. This is an album of autopilot, mid-gear generic rockers and a couple of songs ("Perfect Water" and "Madness to the Method") that try to feel deep, that try to summon the muse, but end up a parlor trick amounting to little more than finding a coin behind your ear. There's little true creative substance there that stays with you in the way an "Astronomy" or a "Joan Crawford" would.

Rather than just being themselves, what their fanbase loved about them in the first place, they were now subbing out songwriting on like half the album! Peers like Heart and Aerosmith hit the jackpot selling out their integrity, but it didn't work as planned for BOC. Despite spending more money on recording this album than any of their previous albums, it was a sales flop. One of the tracks, "Dancin' in the Ruins," was at least catchy and brought them some of the radio play they were clearly jonesing for, but it didn't bring sales. Sadly, the ruins they were dancing around were the smoldering ashes of a rock band who, like many of their contemporaries, were seemingly clueless on how to survive in that new era.

On top of that, it's never been more obvious that the band were now simply out of song ideas, and I'm guessing not really able to work effectively together due to the strain of their circumstances. I personally dislike both the drumming and the keyboard work introduced by the newer members, but that's more a personal taste thing. I've seen others praise the drumming and sound. To be fair, Club Ninja does have its supporters who approve, but most everyone else---fans, critics, hell, some band members---consider it pretty much a dumpster fire. I'll end with a few quotes I found, the latter two of which speak volumes about the environment surrounding this album.

"'least attached to the BOC body of work, painfully constructed, and baffling in its bad taste'" -Author Martin Popoff, "Agents of Fortune - The Blue Oyster Cult Story"

"Club Ninja was the worst record I was ever involved with in my life." -Sandy Pearlman

"Club Ninja was the big catalyst for me leaving the group." -Joe Bouchard

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