BLUE ÖYSTER CULT – Secret Treaties

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9.5

• Bands:
  BLUE OYSTER CULT
• Duration: 00:37.38
• Available since: 04/01/1974
• Label:

• Columbia

The role played by Blue Öyster Cult in the evolution of our music is not so evident, yet traces of their influence can be found in many bands: the most striking example is that of Ghost, who, regardless of what the their leader Tobias Forge, owe a lot to the American band. Yet Blue Öyster Cult's entire career never really achieved the notoriety of other hard rock pillars: dark and mysterious, but less shocking than Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin; excellent musicians, but not absolute virtuosos like Deep Purple; theatrical but without the special effects circus of Alice Cooper or Kiss… of course, their “(Don't) Fear the Reaper” brought them considerable fortune, yet it is undeniable that the band would have deserved much more than it got harvest.
In 1974, Blue Öyster Cult had already released two very high-level albums, but it is with the third album, “Secret Treaties”, that Blue Öyster Cult signed what is probably their masterpiece. The style is further refined and the collection of songs included, free of weak points, best represents the wide spectrum of sounds that make up the DNA of the five. It is precisely the union of the personalities of the individual musicians, in fact, that creates the unique alchemy of their songs: almost all the members, in fact, are excellent composers and arrangers, and yet they have no problem getting support from external people too , such as Sandy Pearlman, here as both producer and author of some of the band's most hermetic lyrics.
The album opens with the sinister “Career Of Evil”, written in collaboration with Patti Smith, which introduces us to the band's darker and more sinuous sound, but it is in compositions like “Dominance And Submission” that we perceive that impetuosity and energy proto-metal which makes them fundamental for the genre covered on our pages. “ME 262” – the airplane model represented on the cover – reaches one of the peaks of the album, with explosive guitars that rest on a pounding piano carpet; “Harvester Of Eyes” turns towards a scratchy and electric hard blues; while that theatricality that we mentioned at the beginning finds its outlet in “Flaming Telepaths”.
If what we have heard up to this moment settles on already excellent levels, the final composition, “Astronomy”, projects Blue Öyster Cult directly into the empyrean. A song that can easily be included in a potential list of the most beautiful musical works of all time, an epic and melancholy ballad capable of rivaling masterpieces of the caliber of “Stairway To Heaven” or Child In Time”. The cryptic lyrics, the elegant arrangements, the stratospheric guitar of Buck Dharma – who, not surprisingly, will have fun live with a very long and acrobatic solo – make this track unique and unforgettable.
“Secret Treaties” is a work that anticipates, with that foresight that belongs to the greatest, some of the paths that rock and metal would explore in the following years. The dark and science fiction atmospheres that seem to come out of an old issue of “Weird Science”, the texts steeped in symbolism and the ability to combine different influences and styles with absolute naturalness are elements that will set the tone. Blue Öyster Cult are certainly not a group of unknowns and the credit they have earned in the generations of musicians to come is enormous, yet their status as outsiders has always put them somewhat on the margins of the scene. Therefore, if this column of ours has the objective of helping the reader discover (or rediscover) masterpieces of the past, “Secret Treaties” can only have a place of honor.