Day 233: Blue Öyster Cult - Agents of Fortune

In my head, Blue Öyster Cult don’t really occupy any sort of space outside of “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, and while it’s a good song, I sometimes even forget that it even exists. So today’s mission is to see if this is a cult that gets me at the very least a little bit interested – if I’m 100% honest, some of them do, mainly out of curiosity. I think the main reason I’ve never joined one is I’ve just never been invited.

Album cover courtesy of Columbia Records

The band originally called themselves Soft White Underbelly, named after Winston Churchill’s description of Italy being the soft white underbelly of the Axis. The band members lived in a little house together and jammed and smoked weed, but it was damp and cold because they couldn’t afford luxuries like heating. Rock critic Sandy Pearlman heard them jamming and offered to be their manager and creative partner, and they agreed. They changed their name to Blue Oyster Cult from a poem that Pearlman had written about an alien race that come to earth to guide humanity

Released in 1976, Agents of Fortune was the group’s breakthrough album that sold platinum and earned them their biggest hit to date, the legendary cowbell-infused  "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". It features a cover of magician Servais Le Roy holding four tarot cards from the Aleister Crowley Thoth tarot deck.

Agents of Fortune is very much dude rock and sounds like something young men who wear Metallica t-shirts listen to when they’re getting high – I mean that as a compliment, it’s an underutilised genre. And I am always charmed by lyrics related to the occult, which is well-treaded water for this group, as they seem to enjoy somewhat spooky-sounding songs with lyrics about vampires, extra-terrestrials or Balthazar.

I was a bit surprised by this one. Only really thinking of the group in the “More cowbell!”-context, I assumed that I was just plugging a gap in my musical knowledge. I didn’t expect to think that this might be an album I’ll listen to again, but it definitely is. When I fulfil one of my childhood dreams of being a middle aged man and buy a motorcycle, I’ll listen to this on the road. 8/10.