The attempt at eye-watering Alien Geometries tinged with H. P. Lovecraft tells you what to expect
Tyranny and Mutation is the second studio album by American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released in February 1973. In common with the others of their first three albums, the artwork has a minimal monochrome design (with touches of red) and is considered to be the second part of the "red, white, and black" trilogy of albums.
Preceded by the self-titled LP Blue Öyster Cult (1972)note and followed by the LP Secret Treaties (1974).
Tracklist:
The Black- "The Red and the Black" (4:20)
- "OD'd on Life Itself" (4:47)
- "Hot Rails to Hell" (5:12)
- "Seven Screaming Dizbusters" (7:01)
The Red
- "Baby Ice Dog" (3:29)
- "Wings Wetted Down" (4:12)
- "Teen Archer" (3:57)
- "Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)" (5:08)
Personnel:
- Eric Bloom: vocals, rhythm guitar, synthesizers
- Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser: lead guitar, vocals
- Allen Lanier: keyboards, rhythm guitar
- Joe Bouchard: bass, vocals, piano
- Albert Bouchard: drums, vocals
Tropes crawling up from the hottest pit of Hell or possibly forged in the Workshop of the Telescopes include
- Alien Geometries: The sleeve designs for the first two LPs revolve around bizarre and unsettlingly alien landscapes and architectures.
- Amazonian Beauty: The title character in "Teen Archer" is very explicitly a classical Amazon, a woman warrior.
- Anti Anti Christ: "Seven Screaming Dizbusters" poses an interesting question. What happens if fallen angels choose to rebel a second time, this time against Lucifer?
- Black Widow: "Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)" has been interpreted several ways and the hard-to-pin-down Word Salad lyrics make it hard to definitively interpret. But one explanation is that this is about a woman who serially murders her lovers or husbands, using quicklime to turn them into fertiliser for her garden.
- Fading into the Next Song: "Baby Ice Dog" segues into "Wings Wetted Down" through the howling of a wolf.
- Heavy Mithril: "Teen Archer", "Wings Wetted Down", "Seven Screaming Dizbusters".
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The album's two sides are split between "The Black" and "The Red"; the disc labels are even color-coded with "The Black" featuring black text on a red background and "The Red" featuring red text on a black background.
- Rearrange the Song: "The Red and the Black" was a new version of "I'm On The Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" (from their first album). It had mostly the same lyrics, but was different musically, and was a minute longer.
- Wolves Always Howl at the Moon: "Baby Ice Dog" is a song about a lover who wanted their woman to be a dog they could break in and domesticate. The narrator realises it doesn't work out like that — this is lampshaded by the song ending not with the bark of a dog, but with the long-drawn-out howl of a wolf. The wolf-howl neatly segues into the next track, "Wings Wetted Down", which is about sinister things in the sky on a wet moonlit night.
