THE REVÖLUTION BY NIGHT

Well, if the 80s that is. One thing that I've always noticed about this band was that as soon as the 80s hit they really did not know what to do. These heavy-metal giants of the 70s who gave us such fantastic albums such as Tyranny & Mutation and Secret Treaties really lost their way and their sound at the turn of the decade. While Cultosaurous Erectus came out at the turn of the decade they still had their classic sound melded with some of the elements of music that were emerging, and on their next album Fire Of Unknown Origin they actually started to mix prog with metal and a bit of 80s pop-rock which actually worked for them fairly well as evident by their hit Burnin' For You. On this album however, they've decided to strip the prog element and focus more or less on the metal-pop-rock side of things. While the are a couple of very, very good tunes on this one there's also a number of standard 80s rock tunes that will make prog-heads shiver.

But let's talk about the good first.

The album opens very promisingly with their single from the album Take Me Away. Bloom takes the helm and uses his harsh voice to make for quite a song backed by an excellent Dharma riff. Heavy and fun. Shooting Shark, though poppy is likely where the last evidence of prog shines through in this seven and a half minute tune. Led by a killer bass riff by Randy Jackson (of American Idol fame) this one is rather pleasant in fact. Veins is also a good rocker even if the lyrics are not quite up to par with the standard BOC material, it also ends side one with a warning siren, which is pretty cool if I do say so. Moving onto side two we have one of the best BOC songs ever written - Shadow Of California would have fit very comfortably on any of their previous albums thanks to it's incredibly malevolent atmosphere and dark brooding mood. An excellent chorus and cool voice effects make this one the definitive standout on the album - and they probably knew this because the album's name is taken from a line in the song and the cover art looks like it should accompany this tune - and it's too bad they didn't stick more to this style for the rest of the songs... that one have made for one hell of an album.

Onto... the rest.

While half the songs range from good to pretty good (and one amazing tune) the rest of the songs on the album are simply unfortunate. Eyes On Fire is the first evidence of this with a very light hearted sound that is also very 80s stadium rock, and Feel The Thunder feels much the same. A couple of other songs though are just not good. Let Go is one that always throws me off, especially since when an artist tells you their name in a song it becomes bad almost instantly (while they've said their name in other songs it's been well done. Subhuman for example used the Blue Oyster Cult as a kind of character in the story) with a line like ''B~O~C, we can be whatever you wanna be!''. Oh, no... But the low point of the album has to be the closer - Light Years Of Love. Just by looking at the name you can probably tell what this song sounds like. This is far too pop to be the career of evil that we once knew.

While it certainly has it's moments the good songs on this album can easily be found on compilations of the band. Good for fans of the band and people who like that 80s stadium sound, but for people looking for prog this is an effort best skipped - go somewhere else to start your voyage with these guys. This one gets 3 eyes on fire out of 5.

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