Spectres

After 1976’s Agents Of Fortune went platinum, Blue Öyster Cult came back fast and hard. Spectres opens with one of their heaviest, funniest songs, “Godzilla” (“he picks up a bus and he throws it back down as he wades through the buildings toward the center of town”) and closes with the haunted power ballad “Nosferatu.” For the half hour in between, the Cult gives the people what they’d (band and audience) just discovered they wanted, plus the usual surprises: how much funk would you expect from a song called “Searchin’ For Celine”? Well, it’s a monster funk-rock jam with a screaming meteor shower of a guitar solo. They may seem cynical at times (“R.U. Ready 2 Rock,” “Goin’ Through The Motions”), but the performances prove that they’re far too committed to their own weird vision to ever truly pander.