BLUE ÖYSTER CULT

And so it begins, the long and weird legacy of one of the most unusual rock bands ever, not to mention the most underrated. Blue Oyster Cult never received the attention or recognition of their contemporaries, and listening to this album it's not hard to understand why... even at the beginning of their career, a time where most band's material sounds reminiscent of their childhood idols, BOC's debut sounds distinctly out of time... sure, there are some Sabbathy guitar passages here and there ("Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll") but these are only faint reminders instead of derivative apeing.

No, what BOC do here is startlingly original and unique... whispered vocals from Eric Bloom, who had yet to define his sound, backed eerie psychedelic-tinged work-outs, bluesy licks and strange distortion... all these ingredients are filtered through to some incomprehensible equation and presented to us by a somewhat botched (read: no budget) production job that does little to make this an inviting listen... in fact, it seems almost alien to this planet, aided in no small part by the group's cryptic sci-fi lyrics and unexplained symbolism. It's no surprise that that this band have been underdogs their entire career, even when they flirted with commercial success... the music is simply too esoteric for broad tastes.

In light of the facts here, can there be any doubt to the validity of Blue Oyster Cult's inclusion into the archives? Prog elitists will argue otherwise, but they do so out of ignorance, knowingly only about this band's hit singles... what we've got here is the origins of "the thinking man's metal group" and being how we all here fashion prog as a "thinking man's genre." the boys from New York fit in just fine.

Welcome home.