For Week Ending:
28 December 2024

Blue Oyster Cult - Ghost Stories (2024)

[Hard Rock]

Upon its release Blue Oyster Cult announced Ghost Stories would be their final studio album. Generally when this happens with such a long lasting and beloved band they pull out all the stops to try to produce one last great album their fans can cherish. Instead, they raided the vaults for old unreleased material, mostly recorded between 1978 and 1983, the period that included the albums Mirrors, Cultosaurus Erectus, Fire Of Unknown Origin and The Revolution By Night. These albums are all held in high regard by fans, but time will tell if the reworked left-overs included here are thought of similarly. Some additions were added to the tracks and AI was used in places to de-mix songs for rework, so this isn't just a bunch of left overs packed in the state they were found. Care and attention was apparently applied to the recordings to enhance them. That is why it is so baffling that they sound so void of any passion or intensity. 'Late Night Street Fight' is a groovy start, and opens the album up with in a rather mellow, laid-back way. It isn't the best opener, but has enough charm to hold your interest. 'Cherry' follows, but this is where the charm starts to evaporate. The song sounds like a cast off from a 1950s musical theatre show, more akin to an average Jim Steinman song than a band of this calibre. 'So Supernatural' is one of the catchier songs, and sounds more like vintage BOC than most songs on the album, but it is still ephemeral affair that feels like it would be the worst song on a better album. The cover of The Animals 'We Gotta Get Out Of This Place is flat and lifeless, but the band does breath some life into the MC5's 'Kick Out The Jams'. 'Soul Jive' and 'Gun' are both insignificant songs, saved by the slight boogie-shuffle of 'Shot In The Dark'. As the album winds up 'Don't Come Running To Me' covers the penultimate spot and is one of the better songs on the album, but then the album closes with an acoustic (and quite insipid) cover of The Beatles 'If I Fell' (apparently recorded some time in 2016). After a few listens it is clear that the title, Ghost Stories, is very suited to the material - as this sounds like an album full of songs so thin that you can see right through them. They often feel underdeveloped and flimsy to the point of being unnecessary, and the whole album is void of the vitality that once made this a great band.

Arist Information
Blue Oyster Cult is an American hard rock band formed on Long Island in Stony Brook, New York, in 1967. The band's fusion of hard rock with psychedelia, and penchant for occult, fantastical and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, had a major influence on heavy metal music. The band has sold 25 million records worldwide, including 7 million in the United States.

Release Information
'Ghost Stories' is the fifteenth studio album by Blue Oyster Cult. It is a collection of songs from the band's archives demixed and remixed using artificial intelligence.

Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994)

[Grunge Rock]

Acknowledging the fact the band cut their craft in the 80's and had a couple of releases in that period which stand on their own, they eventually made it big on the alternate scene with Badmotorfinger in 1991, receiving MTV play for the likes of 'Jesus Christ Pose'. Another Seattle native band about to make it big. There will be many arguments for decades to go on who provided the biggest influence very early on. In someways it could be argued that Cornell alone was one of the biggest influences, setting up the like of Temple Of The Dog while Soundgarden were still paving their way forward. In any case, all eyes on the post Badmotorfinger release. And it hit hard in 1994 with Superunknown, that bought a ton of hits for the fans to love. It seems disrespectful to simply state the record is a bunch of catchy songs to get active on, learning the vocals and smiling whenever you heard them on the radiowaves, hanging out for them to tour the album. Yet the record has some very hard hitters like 'Fell On Black Days' and 'The Day I Tried To Live'. Call it a ballad if you will, but there are certainly parts in the record that has the listener pause for a breath and take note of the lyrics Chris has written. The album really has no fillers, with further highlights being the self-titled song, 'Spoonman', 'Limo Wreck' and finishing the record up with 'Like Suicide' - a very moody piece written by Cornell which arguably brings the listener down to reality after listening to such an engrossing release by the band. In some ways it is hard to listen to the band these days following Cornell's passing in 2017. Apart from just wanting to hear the band play again, the world has been robbed of the incredible talents of Kim Thayil and Ben Shephard. Matt Cameron being a big part of the band also of course but he lives on through Pearl Jam thankfully. R.I.P always Chris.

Arist Information
Soundgarden was an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1984. The band dissolved in 1997 and reformed in 2010. Following frontman Chris Cornell's death in 2017 and a year of uncertainty regarding the band's future, Thayil declared in October 2018 that Soundgarden had disbanded once again, though they did reunite in January 2019 for a one-off concert in tribute to Cornell.

Release Information
'Superunknown' is the fourth studio album by Soundgarden. It retained the heaviness of the band's earlier releases while displaying a more diverse range of influences, and was a critical and commercial success and became the band's breakthrough album. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 310,000 copies in its opening week. The album also topped the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand charts.