SPECTRES

When Blue Oyster Cult included a song entitled Going Through The Motions on this album, you could see it as being a bit of a ballsy move. Spectres, if you come to it looking for the sort of esoteric, dark proto-metal that Blue Oyster Cult made their name with in their early days, will come across as an unappealing collection of pop metal nonsense and soft rock schmaltz.

Not that pop metal or soft rock are necessarily a bad thing, mind - and as it turns out, Blue Oyster Cult aren't too bad at it. Essentially doubling down on the poppier aspects of Agents of Fortune, at its dumbest the album is simply goofy fun (Godzilla), but on the other hand as the title implies the band haven't quite abandoned their brains altogether.