Blue Öyster Cult: The Symbol Remains

I've been a huge Blue Öyster Cult fan since the late '90s, when, after repeated viewing of The Stöned Age, I picked up the On Your Feet or on Your Knees double LP from the Half Price Books on FM 1960 and Veterans Memorial, and subsequently all of BÖC's albums, also on vinyl (and CD, in some cases; I even have, thanks to my brother, A Long Day's Night on the frankly bullshit format known as "audio DVD"). I had a BÖC belt buckle until it broke, my wife got me a BÖC shirt that's as old if not older than me, and I've seen them live three times.

But all of these credentials went out the window when I learned, after the fact, that the band had released its first album in almost 20 years. And I don't mean I was a month or two behind the curve; the album in question, The Symbol Remains, came out last goddamned year. In my feeble defense, I don't follow music news like I used to, the last time I visited the BÖC webpage it was pretty stale, and it's not unreasonable to be surprised by a band led by septuagenarians putting out a record in the middle of a pandemic. But my laziness and excuses aren't the issue here; the record is.

Blue Öyster Cult's latter-day (i.e., 1998-present) output is better than you'd expect from a band that basically drifted apart in the '80s after making a few increasingly poppy, but never fully, objectively bad, records. It's a bit heavier here and there, and retains the melodies and that twist of weirdness that makes BÖC what they are. They even managed to write a song as good as, and maybe better than, any from their heyday: "Harvest Moon", from Heaven Forbid, is one of my favorite BÖC songs ever. (Check out the live version on A Long Day's Night.) It's a shame they didn't keep writing new stuff, but on some level, did they really need to? Their setlists from the album-lean, tour-heavy 21st century (BÖC is, after all, "on tour forever") could be slightly predictable, but they pulled enough good, semi-obscure material out of the catalogue to make resting on their laurels more than acceptable.

So the release of The Symbol Remains comes as a welcome surprise. Lyrically, the songwriting meets all your esoteric BÖC expectations, with writer John Shirley, who was responsible for many of the lyrics on their last couple records, returning here, along with Richard Meltzer, who's co-written his fair share of BÖC tunes over the years. Buck Dharma and Eric Bloom sound fantastic; the former's still got the vibe of a nice guy stuck in a disturbing sci-fi dream, and the latter's voice is as gloating and sinister as ever. Musically speaking, even the least interesting tunes on The Symbol Remains are still pretty good, and the really good ones ("Box in My Head", "Nightmare Epiphany", "Edge of the World", and "The Alchemist" stand out) are potential classics, or at least fan favorites, in the making. Especially noteworthy is that my favorite song here, "Edge of the World", is written completely by one of the "new" (read: since 2004) members, Richie Castellano, which goes to show that BÖC is (and always has been, really) more than just Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma. The whole thing comes together exceptionally well, with even the weaker songs playing a role in the ebb and flow of the album.

I don't want to jump the gun and say this is going to be the last Blue Öyster Cult album, because the band might pull a Thomas Pynchon and become uncharacteristically prolific in its later years, but if this is the last record they make, BÖC is going out with a bang. Beyond rightfully popular tunes like "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", BÖC has never really made the impact they should have, despite being, to probably slightly misquote Mike Watt, "the eye at the top of the pyramid." Maybe The Symbol Remains will do something to change that, but even if it doesn't, that's cool. We've gotten 50 years of heavy metal arcana and killer melodies, after all. Not a lot of bands can claim that kind of legacy.