Blue Öyster Cult is one of my favorite bands of all time. I spent the better part of my teen years following them throughout the Midwest. My mother, perplexed by this obsession with what was to her, an arena rock footnote of her youth, asked me around the 7th or 8th time I saw them, “How many times can you hear “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”?” The correct answer is never. But this gap embodies the enigma that is BÖC. You either only know “Reaper” or you lose sleep over every little lyrical and musical nuance within their vast catalog.
There are few things in the world I love like seeing BÖC live. For those brief 90 or 120 minutes (depending on the setting), the outside world evaporates and I get to live my arcane metal fantasy. My eardrums rattle with the hard and heavy sounds of the 70s, as Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma serenade the masses with tales of WW2, motorcycles, and the occult. Forget psychedelics and sensory deprivation chambers. A BÖC show is a mind altering event like no other. But as these leather clad road warriors stuck true to their promise of being “On Tour Forever”, captivating me with the music of yesteryear, I wondered: “Will I ever have a BÖC album I can call my own?” The long awaited answer to this question came today in the form of The Symbol Remains.
BÖC knew they had a lot of catching up to do. After all, The Symbol Remains is their first album in nearly 20 years. They went the route of many fellow veteran acts who haven’t released music in a fat minute and stuffed about two albums worth of music on here. We’ve seen this approach hinder many potentially great comeback albums, knocking them down a couple notches to merely “good” or “okay”. Not here. While there’s definitely songs I like more than others, there’s not one you can call “filler” out of these 14 tracks. That in itself is an accomplishment and a testament to BÖC’s songwriting abilities.
The vocals and songwriting duties are evenly spread between founders Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma, as well as “new” guitarist, Richie Castellano. I put new in quotation marks because Castellano joined in 2004, but I guess that makes him “new” compared to the group’s founders. Eric’s songs are unusually dark and heavy. By “heavy”, I don’t mean what you’d expect as “heavy” from BÖC. These are all out metallic assaults on the senses, the likes of which we’ve never heard from this band before.
“That Was Me” kicks things off with a hooky Sabbathian riff that gets hands clapping and heads banging. “Stand and Fight” may be the single heaviest song in BÖC history, boasting riffs that sound more in place on an Exhorder song. And then there’s “The Alchemist”. This 6 and a half minute epic revisits the occult lyrical themes of early BÖC, while Buck and Richie plod away at some doomy, dirge worthy riffs. That is before throwing us a curveball with the sweetest Maiden inspired twin guitar solo you won’t hear on the new Traveler record. What’s most remarkable is that Eric Bloom is almost 76 and performing music so absurdly heavy, the Ayatollah would sentence him to death for blasphemy. What the hell is Deep Purple’s excuse?
On the opposite side of the spectrum is six string extraordinaire, Buck Dharma. His songs are much more mellow, serving as a palette cleanser to Eric’s old/newfound (however you take it) audio evil. Some have a southern twang to them (“Nightmare Epiphany”, “Train True (Lennie’s Song)”), while others recall the AM friendly progressive pop of Mirrors (“Box in My Head”, “Florida Man”). What they all have in common is exceptional guitar work. If nothing else, they further cement Dharma’s legacy as one of the most underrated guitarists in rock history.
Richie Castellano’s contributions to this album are a fine addition, giving an extra layer of depth which would have previously been provided by the Bouchard brothers. Besides meshing perfectly with Dharma on guitars, his vocals have a raw, soulful grit reminiscent of the late Phil Lynott. He really is the full package and provides us with what I believe is the finest BÖC song in decades, “Tainted Blood”. This vampiric power ballad is of the same caliber of past bloodsucking classics, “Tattoo Vampire” and “Nosferatu” (my favorite BÖC song of all time).
The Symbol Remains doesn’t reach the heights of Secret Treaties, Agents of Fortune, and Fire of Unknown Origin. Few albums could. With that said, it’s just as strong as their last two albums, Heaven Forbid and Curse of the Hidden Mirror; perhaps even stronger in certain places. I can now rest assured that I finally have my own BÖC album…and a damn good one at that.
8 out of 10
Label: Frontiers Records
Genre: Hard Rock
For fans of: Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple