Blue Oyster Cult: Curse Of The Hidden Mirror : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

At this point, remakes, repackages and live albums outpace new material in the land of Blue Oyster Cult. But as they enter their fourth decade of service, BOC are still trying to tap the hot rail to relevancy. Curse of the Hidden Mirror follows up 1998's Heaven Forbid with plenty of utilitarian riffage from the hard rock troika of Eric Bloom, Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser and Allen Lanier. BOC's trademarks - over-amped boogie riffs, squealing high-note guitar solos and vibrato-torqued lead vocals wrapped around lyrics of gothic origin -- are all lodged firmly in place. As is the band's schizophrenia. Resigned to walking the tightrope between hard rock and full-on heavy metal, the band one minute traps itself in the dungeon of darkness ("One Step Ahead of the Devil") only to work its way back to the power-chord surface for the radio-friendly "Here Comes That Feeling." Surely, at this late date, any similarities to Spinal Tap (the organ solo in "Good to Be Hungry," for starters) are purely coincidental . . . and ultimately unavoidable.

ROB O'CONNOR
(June 4, 2001)