Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Re-master, August 22, 2001
No bones about it, I think this is one of the greatest rock albums of all time. I've owned it on 8 track, vinyl, the original CD issue, a French (inferioir avoid at all cost) remaster, and now this new version with bonus tracks. Sound quality is great, there may have even been some re-mixing involved because the bass and piano as well as some underlying rhythm guitar seems way more pronounced than on any other version I've heard; but the right EQ could have brought some of this to the surface as well. As for the bonus tracks : I anxiously awaited this release to hear what lost relics came from these sessions. They are interesting, but it was wise to leave them off the original running order of the album. They would have damaged the flow, and believe me this is one of the finest paced albums ever. If you are expecting chestnuts as cool as The Stalk Forrest Group CD put out by Rhino Handmade, you'll be sorely dissappointed. These songs didn't make the final cut of a classic album for good reason. The single version of "Career Of Evil" has a totally different vocal, with a few controversial lines changed for radio airplay, not that it was ever going to get any. The B-side studio version of "Born To Be Wild" is an interesting take on a classic, but I much prefer the live version on On Your Feat Or On Your Knees.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crypto-fascism never sounded so good, July 28, 2001
Subhumans, harvesters of eyes and cagey cretins, unite! On their third voyage through the soft white underbelly of human depravity, BOC splits the difference between the math-rock mayhem of "Tyranny and Mutation" and the Byrds-of-prey pop breakthrough of "Agents of Fortune," and elevated heavy metal to an artform that's far more sleek and sinister than anything Black Sabbath dared dream. While the lyrics often sound like they were encrypted first, rubic carabs swimming with blue-eyed horseshoes while Susy and her blindfolded brother dig the locomotion in Times Square on New Year's Eve in 1963, there's no missing the Chuck Berry goosestep boogie of "ME 262," a hymn to the Luftwaffe's fighter jet that also graces the cover, the whipcrack riffrot of "Dominance & Submission," the interstellar grandeur of "Astronomy" (lovingly covered by Metallica, who wouldn't exist without this record) and especially the synthesonic apocalypso of "Flaming Telepaths," where barrelhouse piano duels with Buck Dharma's dizbusting guitar licks in a blown-hemi sprint to see who can peak from the rush faster and louder while Eric Bloom solemnly informs the listener that "the joke's on you." And just to be sure you know they know you know the secrets of the circuitry mind, the reissue includes Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" as the inevitable benediction. All hail the progenitorturers of the superfluous umlat!
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Secret - This Is A Great Album!, July 25, 2001
This is my favorite of the remastered reissues of the first four Blue Öyster Cult albums which Sony put out on the Columbia/Legacy label. As with the other reissues there are lyrics, photos, and liner notes by Lenny Kaye. In addition, on this release there are five bonus tracks, three of which were previously unreleased. "Secret Treaties" was recorded in 1974 and released in April of that year. As with their first two albums, it was produced by Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman. This remastered CD was released on June 26th of 2001. Bruce Dickinson produced the remastered versions. The album was originally planned to be titled "Power in the Hands of Fools".
For my money "Secret Treaties" is the best of their first three albums (often referred to as their "black-and-white" period). From the opening of "Career of Evil" (their second collaboration with Patti Smith) to the sounds of the wind dying away at the end of "Astronomy" the listener is entranced. Two of the songs on this album ("Astronomy" and "Subhuman") would reappear in different form more than a dozen years later on their "Imaginos" album. The song titles from this album read like a list of concert favorites for BÖC fans with songs like "Dominance and Submission", "ME 262", "Harvester of Eyes", and "Flaming Telepaths" joining those I already mentioned as songs often heard during their live shows. The remaining piece from the original release is the off-beat "Cagey Cretins", which falls short of the rest of the album but doesn't distract too much from the rest.
This remastered CD has five bonus tracks. The first three pieces ("Boorman the Chauffer", "Mommy", and "Mes Dames Sarat") are outtakes from the studio sessions for the album and none of them have been released before. As one might suspect, outtakes from an album this good are definitely worth a listen. The next is a studio version of "Born to Be Wild" which was the B-side for the live "Born to Be Wild" single from their first live album "On Your Feet or On Your Knees". The last bonus track is the single version of "Career of Evil", which has more "radio-friendly" lyrics.
The group consists of Eric Bloom (lead vocals, stun guitar, keyboards), Albert Bouchard (drums, vocals), Joe Bouchard (bass, vocals), Allen Lanier (keyboards, rhythm guitar, all synthesizers), and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser (lead guitar, vocals). The original album is five stars, and the added features of this release do not detract from the original, but instead enhance the experience.
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