The Blue Oyster Cult has always been plagued by image problems of its own creation. By taking heavy metal to its literary extreme, the Cult made itself an in-joke to intellectual rockers and the consummate heavy-guitar band to the teenage underbelly. If anything gave the Cult a cogent image, it was the group's recorded
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sound — dense and spacey with sledgehammer rhythms that sounded as if they were being beamed in from an orbiting satellite. But by the time it recorded its live album, the Cult was in a bind: its popularity had plateaued and its audience was almost exclusively composed of guitar-hungry, get-down kids. Which is cool—the Cult is nothing if not guitar-heavy, get-down kids—but ultimately limiting.
It's not surprising then that the two riff rockers on Spectres, the crucial followup to last year's breakthrough, Agents of Fortune, direct themselves toward that heavy-metal paradox. "Godzilla" encapsulates the Cult's stylistic attitude: the conceit of the tune must inevitably be larger than its execution. On its first album, the Cult sang about "Cities on Flame with Rock & Roll," and the theme is the same here: Godzilla rips apart Tokyo with the same monstrous bravado of the riffing guitars that destroyed the kids. In this case, though, the idea is more attractive than the song.
"R.U. Ready 2 Rock" finds the Cult confronting its audience. "I ain't gonna catch those get-down blues," they sing over a thudding beat that dissolves into a bridge and finds them boasting, "I only live to be born again." This give-and-take with the audience forms the initial frame-work of Spectres, but the meat of the album is something else altogether. Spectres is the Blue Oyster Cult's love album, both literally romantic and allegorical, and the band's view of such liaisons is as dynamic as its relationship with its audience.
At the conclusion of "R.U. Ready 2 Rock," the band pulls out the stops on a boogie beat after singer Eric Bloom finds his mythical lover. This ambiguous "you" (is it his audience or a lover?) is carried over into "Goin' through the Motions," a sturdy rocker cowritten by Ian Hunter and Bloom. Depicting the love games played on one-night stands with appropriate sarcasm, the tune deftly culls a line from the Cult's first album standard, "Stairway to the Stars": "I'll even sign it, 'love to you,' again," and the attitude of an arrogant rock star becomes the same as that of a snobbish lover.
Beyond the aforenamed riffers that open each side, the Cult's music is more subtly crafted than ever before, continuing in the sleek, textured vein that provided the highlights of Agents of Fortune. "I Love the Night," which bends the tale of Dracula into a perverse love story, features the dense guitar orchestration of "(Don't Fear) The Reaper." "Nosferatu" boasts the same heady complexion, with vocal harmonies and Allen Lanier's rolling piano providing a properly celestial bac
