Blue Öyster Cult: Spectres (180g) [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

This Music On Vinyl pressing comes on 180g vinyl with a printed inner sleeve. Spectres gave the band "Godzilla," one of their biggest hits and a concert staple ever since, and went gold in the US within weeks.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Printed inner sleeve
• Lyrics included

About the album

Blue Öyster Cult were in a funny spot in 1977: "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" had made them radio stars, and their live show had become a laser-lit spectacle. Spectres puts those lasers right on the cover and keeps the big, smart hard rock coming, with Murray Krugman, Sandy Pearlman and David Lucas producing for Columbia and Shelly Yakus engineering and mixing. The band co-produced too, and it shows in how confident the whole thing sounds.

Buck Dharma's "Godzilla" opens the record with one of the great riffs of the decade, and it has been stomping through setlists ever since. "Golden Age Of Leather" brings in the Newark Boys Chorus, "I Love The Night" is a dreamy, moonlit ballad, and "Goin' Through The Motions," co-written with Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, is a hand-clapping pop-rocker that Bonnie Tyler later covered. "R. U. Ready 2 Rock" and "Nosferatu" keep the band's gothic, sci-fi streak well fed, with Eric Bloom, Allen Lanier and the Bouchard brothers all in fine form.

It's the band at their most theatrical and most tuneful at once. Somewhere in Tokyo, we assume, the monster is still on tour.

Also at Kops: more Blue Öyster Cult on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Music On Vinyl / Columbia (cat# MOVLP3424), a reissue of the 1977 album.