In heavy metal’s demonic pantheon, Blue Oyster Cult occupies an exalted position at Thor’s table alongside titans like Black Sabbath and Motorhead. As America’s first great metal band and the creator of some of the heaviest, most macabre music in rock, it’s a position well earned.
But labeling BOC a “metal” act is like calling the Stones an R&B combo. Throughout its career, the Cult made subtle forays into psychedelia, prog and pop, and if the band sometimes played up its headbanger image, one could often spot its collective tongue wedged into a smirk-tightened cheek.
During the ’80s, BOC songwriting collaborators even included punk icons Patti Smith and Jim Carroll.
Although the band stopped recording 10 years ago, BOC recently resurfaced with a respectable new LP, “Heaven Forbid,” that found band mainstays Eric Bloom (guitar/vocals), Buck Dharma (guitar/vocals) and Allen Lanier (guitar) in fine form.
On Friday night, the revitalized Cult stormed the Skyline Stage with a set that found the band flexing all of its old muscles–for better and worse.
Even the weather cooperated with a rainy, misty night tailor made for BOC’s darkside vision.
The Cult’s opening one-two punch of “Burnin’ for You” and “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll” proved that it could still deliver hook-y pop and wrecking-ball metal with only mildly diminished power. The band’s twin guitar/vocal duo of Bloom and Dharma sounded as if time had somehow forgotten to caress them with its debilitating touch.
Throughout the set, the band dispatched Cult classics like “Flaming Telepaths,” the searingly punky “The Red and the Black,” and its classic mission statement, “This Ain’t the Summer of Love,” with a sharp mix of low-end power and smooth finesse.
BOC also made a convincing case for its more recent musical mutations. “Harvest Moon,” a lush graveyard pop standout, was great, even with its somewhat gratuitous boogie break, and “Live for Me” was a brooding, minor-key hook fest propelled by the band’s close vocal harmonies and Dharma’s keening leads. There was even a noteworthy nod to contemporary metal with the shuddering quasi-thrasher “See You in Black.”
But the Cult also injected some stinko arena rock aroma into the proceedings by marring tunes like “E.T. I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)” and “Buck’s Boogie” with irrelevant instrumental grandstanding. The band even sidetracked the rumbling majesty of “Godzilla” with those twin plagues of ’70s concert-going: the unaccompanied bass and drum solo.
Fortunately, BOC effectively cleared the air–and closed its set–with a potent, no frills take on its Byrds-meet-Bela Lugosi masterpiece, “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” In short, while there was an awkward dinosaur swagger in its moves, the Cult proved it could still muster a fairly savage bite.
