EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIVE

This is about as far as this rock fan went into BOC's discography, even though I'd had stopped buying their albums since Cultosaurus, but managing to get the albums on loan, through fiends. And what a worthy double live this turned out to be, certainly better than On Your Knees (75) or Enchanted Evening (78), although the remastered version of this makes it better than ETL, but this is a very excellent album to own if you're a casual Cult fan. With a derivate of FoUO's artwork, this double collection is close to what's best if it hadn't forgotten the Treaties album.

However, even if he still appears on some tracks of this double Live collection, it is drummer Albert Bouchard's last appearance with the Cult for a while as I understand that it wasn't exactly of a mutual consent and the acrimony remains. No matter what, BOC will suffer from his absence, because they not only lost an excellent drummer (who had turned in a very fine performance on FoUO), but also a gifted songwriter. What is strange is that Brother Joe remained with BOC without making waves and Downey is just adequate replacing him behind the kit.

The first part of the album is the usual BOC selection of semi-classic BOC songs, including two from their latest. As is now obvious, BOC now plays with sound tapes/effects to make their live version sticks a bit more to the studio originals. The only thing special to signal is a 9-mins Roadhouse Blues cover with Doorman Krieger accompanying the band, but it's nothing worth the price of admission. Of a much better level is outstanding second disc, starting with an excellent and more aggressive version of Black blade. Moments later come the unstoppable Godzilla, complete with an excellent introduction a majorly fun opening bars. The crowd adores it, and so are we. Although cut by a short into parts drum solo, the song is almost 8-mins of pure fun. Following by a stupendous (and extended) version of Psychic Wars, the group is pilling the hits one after the other. What a pity that ETI is next, instead of Astronomy, because it's a bit of a let down and before wrapping it up with Reaper, we'd love to have seen their proggiest tune ever get such a choice place in the concert track list.

Although never a prog band, BOC had some real classic metal/rock hits that their career is difficult to overlook, and if one can say that that BOC is not essential to a proghead, the three classic live albums are a minimum that experimented rockers should/must have on their shelves.