Every band needs time to coalesce as a solid unit. The more time a group spends together writing and playing, the tighter each area should become.
For Blue Oyster Cult, their sophomore release Tyranny And Mutation showed they had indeed become a tight ship when it came to their playing. But a little something seemed to be lost in the overall songwriting; the eight tracks that make up the core album (not any bonus songs later thrown in for good measure), while entertaining enough to listen to, don’t necessarily suck the listener into their orbits.
Seeing that this was the disc that spawned future classics like “Hot Rails To Hell” and “7 Screaming Diz-Busters” (whatever the hell a Diz-Buster was supposed to be), that might seem to be a bit of a shock. But, when you lead off the disc with a re-tooling of a song that was on your debut album, one might wonder just what could be going on within the band.
It’s not that any of the performances are bad. Even “The Red And The Black” - essentially a do-over of “I’m On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep” - has the power and energy to show the listener just how much Buck Dharma and crew had grown as a band over a short period of time. Indeed, the first half of the album keeps the pedal pressed completely down in terms of energy. It’s just that the overall performances don’t have that spark to keep the listener necessarily engrossed until the final fade-out.
The second half of Tyranny And Mutation is where the energy decreases, and more focus seems to be put into the execution of the songs rather than trying to balls-off rock the foundations. Of these, only “Mistress Of The Salmon Salt (Quicktime Girl)” seems to hit the target solidly, if not completely hitting the bullseye. Again, it’s not that tracks such as “Baby Ice Dog” or “Teen Archer” are necessarily bad; they simply don’t have the lasting power one might have expected.
Perhaps it is just that the studio wasn’t the best way for these songs to be presented, and they needed the live stage to truly showcase themselves. (Then again, “Buck’s Boogie,” one of the bonus tracks included on the re-issue, would honestly have made the original album a lot stronger.) Perhaps these songs just needed time to fully mature in a live setting, as the band continued to gather experience and strength.
As it is, though, Tyranny And Mutation remains a slight step down from Blue Oyster Cult’s debut effort, but is hardly a failure, and has enough substance to remain an enjoyable enough listen.