BLUE ÖYSTER CULT — Imaginos (review)

BLUE ÖYSTER CULT — Imaginos album cover Album · 1988 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Warthur
With Blue Oyster Cult in the doldrums, manager Sandy Pearlman convinced them to stay together for just one more album in order to record his magnum opus - Imaginos, a concept album based on a horror story concept by Pearlman, which Pearlman had been workshopping with exiled original drummer Albert Bouchard for much of the mid-1980s.

In principle, this would have been an excellent idea... if they'd done it as a followup to Secret Treaties, when they were in their prime. (As a matter of fact, Secret Treaties consisted of ancillary material surrounding the Imaginos legend, so that'd have been a neat way to follow it up.)

As it stands, the version of Imaginos we got is in effect Blue Oyster Cult's equivalent of Music From the Elder by Kiss. Both are concept albums which were intended to be the first part of a trilogy. Both had their running order screwed around with and flow much better when you resequence the tracks back the way they're supposed to be. Both involve lots of session musicians and only questionably involve the actual bands they are attributed to at all. Both have wild horror-fantasy-SF plotlines.

The big difference is that Kiss were truly unsuited to this sort of project, whereas at least Blue Oyster Cult's usual style fitted the endeavour. The best way to enjoy Imaginos is to not get too hung up with it sounding like Blue Oyster Cult or involving Blue Oyster Cult musicians, and instead taking it for what it is: Sandy Pearlman having a wild old time turfing out some banging hard rock numbers in the studio with session musicians and whichever combination of Blue Oyster Cult members (and ex-members in the case of Bouchard) were willing to talk to each other that day.
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