Blue Oyster Cult

Through a combination of circumstances, New York has never been a spawning group for
very many good, enduring white rock 'n' roll bands. The Velvet Underground spring
readily to mind. and the Rascals, and there have been several fine one shots that never got
the attention they deserved, like the Good Rats and Autosalvage. But the Big Apple, as us
farmboys call it, hasn't really come through with solid rockout organizations too... More >

Warning: critics' band, managed by Sandy Pearlman with occasional lyrics by R. Meltzer. Reassurance: the most musical hard rock album since Who's Next. (Well, that's less than six months, and this is not a great time for hard rock albums.) The style is technocratic psychedelic, a distanced, decisively post-Altamont reworking of the hallucinogenic guitar patterns of yore, with lots of heavy trappings. Not that they don't have a lyrical side. In "Then Came the Last Days of May," for instance, four young men ride out to seek their fortune in the dope biz and one makes his by wasting the other three. (Grade: B+)