Jerk Music Critic: Blue Öyster Cult, Fire of Unknown Origin

There's a good reason this is the BÖC album everyone remembers, and that's because it's easily some of their most consistent output on one record. Calling it heavy metal is a bit of stretch, ironically given "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" prominence in the actual Heavy Metal movie (for which "Vengeance (The Pact)" was also intended), but there is solid and listenable hard rock to be had in general, particularly those two and (heh) "Heavy Metal" itself. This doesn't mean this album is perfect, though: "Burnin' For You" is a Cult classic, but its pop single tendencies sound out of place with the other tracks, and on the second half "After Dark" is boring drivel and I've still got no idea what to do thematically with "Joan Crawford" (though I've always liked the piano intro). Those latter two oddballs are fortunately quickly forgotten with my favourite track as closer, "Don't Turn Your Back," a fascinating feast of menacing lyrics, disquieting harmonies and unsettlingly cheery syncopation. If there is truly a central theme to this stylistically varied album, it would be indeed that undercurrent of menace and looming disaster as forces beyond our control assemble against us, and yet we shoulder on, knowing we have no choice. Such forces, in the disinterested cosmos this album paints, descend upon us from somewhere we will never truly know or understand. And this album does capture that feeling of hopeless struggle, however unevenly. (Content: no concerns.)

🌟🌟🌟

Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟
Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

🌟🌟
Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

🌟
Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

💩
How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.