TYRANNY AND MUTATION

The logical successor to their self-titled debut, BOC added one (red) colour to their B&W artwork of Tyranny And Mutation. With an unchanged line-up, and released in 73 on Columbia. With the same Pearlman producer (still co-writing a few songs), T&M chooses two sides on colours red and black. Songwriting-wise the credits are fairly evenly shared throughout all five musicians. The strange and dark artwork implies that BOC's philosophies are emitted through their logo acting as an antenna and the back cover seems to tell us that our speakers the transmitters and our ears are the receiving end. I always thought of BOC as spreaders of evil as a dumb idea, and nowhere but in their early career was this most evident, this artwork and their "lyrics" being the proof of this. Even as a rteenager, I wasn(t much impressed.

The black side features three fast-paced tracks, of which only Screaming Diz-Busters is actually interesting (it'll become a BOC classic, extended in concert), and one slower-paced track OD On Life Itself. The red flipside starts out with a punk goddess Patti-Smith collab (she was dating one of the member of BOC) Baby Iced Dog, which sets a calmer mood for the whole side, with the Pablo Neruda-based Wings Wetted Down, the pleasant Teen Archer and a good closing Mistress Of Salmon Salt. I prefer red over black, I must say.

The remastered reissue comes with a bunch of live bonus tracks, which I haven't heard , but generally live material shouldn't be assembled on the same disc with a studio album. Certainly an improvement on their debut, T&M is lags behind the future and upcoming Treaties, but I don't fond this is a very pertinent album when mentioning prog