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The Unknown Tongues Of BOC

Andre S. Grindle | Brewer Maine | 07/15/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I cannot believe I wasn't aware to a huge extent of Blue Oyster Cults music until now. I knew about jazz,fusion and funk inflected rock bands such as King Crimson,Talking Heads,Led Zeppelin and Steely Dan and each have their own distinct flavors and styles. But BOC were always kind of known as a two hit wonder to me. Once I began exploring albums like this I was more than a little surprised by the musical,rhythmic and lyrical depth this band offered. Well it's the beginning of the 80's and music has become more bitterly divided into labels than ever before. It might seem like a day when bands like this one might just stick to one particular style to stay afloat but if anything they stuck to their guns and delivered one of their most rhythmic and lyrically explorative albums ever. This album obviously wasn't put into the music world with the intentions of getting on the radio or appealing to some obscure prog rock market: it was just a "classic rock" band in a place not looking to be too commercial at this time so they made something they obviously wanted to cut. This album contains songs such as "Blake Blade","Divine Wind","The Marshall Plan","Hungry Boys","Fallen Angel" and "Lips On The Hills"-these tunes have a sound wherin again hard rock is not utilized to create exciting noise for teenagers or metal heads but in order to fully explore textures of riffs,rhythms and harmonic alterations to see how they react to eachother to create compellingly constructed songs. They don't take off on the same flights of fancy that similar bands such as Rush might but it's their focus that's part of their individual sound. Lyrically these songs explore,in different ways how rock isn't necessarily associated with evil or "the devil" in general and harkens back to the classic blues preoccupation with salvation FROM evil to a unique spiritual landscape. "Monsters" is one of the finest songs this band ever recorded: a rock fusion number with heavily driving rhythm guitars and even swinging jazz refrains complete with sax solos. It's not a gimmick though;it's a showcase of how swing jazz has a direct lineage to the music they do and it's especially apparent when the jazz backup drops away and the sax stands alone in the song's rockier element-you really hear the connection strong. "Deadline" really dives very strongly into a jazzy blues/rock rhythm with with a tight pop hook to boot and really reminds me a lot of Steely Dan in it's execution although still destinctly their own sound. The final song "Unknown Tongue" has some actually very Todd Rundgrenoid/Hall & Oates Philly style electric piano chords in the mix that only furthers the music's connectivity. For a person who always kind of perceived a lot of classic rock as somewhat one dimentional and limited in scope this is a strong reminder that wasn't always the case. In fact I could define this music both in many different ways and on another groove as belonging to no particular genre. And how much of the more clished variety of classic rock,in all honesty can one say that about?"