Blue Öyster Cult have told MetalTalk that their first new studio album in almost two decades will be released 9 October via Frontiers. A limited edition vinyl pressing of ‘The Symbol Remains’ can also be ordered from Frontiers (limited to 200 each in green, crystal, blue).
The sessions for ‘The Symbol Remains’ began in 2019. This included some songs which were ‘in progress’ and the aim of the sessions was to craft a portrait of where the band is now.
Eric Bloom told MetalTalk: “As the song demos emerged, we realised there was as much, if not more variety in style and content on this record as any in our history.
“We embraced this and the thing tying all the disparate elements together is the band’s sound and performance.”
Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser agrees, telling us: “The goal was for the new music to stand up to the quality and vitality of our legacy recordings and I believe we have successfully achieved that.
“Other than that, the sound of our voices and style of our writing and playing can’t help but sound familiar to fans of our work.”
The title of the album, ‘The Symbol Remains’, comes from an important part of their past.
Eric Bloom told us: “The album title comes from a quote of an old Sandy Pearlman [famed BÖC producer and manager] lyric, which basically we are using to show that the band is back and still rocking after all these years.
“To me, it means we’re still here and doing what we do.”
With Bloom and Roeser as the only members from the ‘classic’ BÖC line-up, in Jules Radino, Danny Miranda and Richie Castellano they continue to be a hard working and solid lineup.
‘Buck Dharma’ is excited about adding to the almost five decade recording career for the band, telling us: “We have wanted to record the current line-up for some time and the result of us giving our all on this album speaks for itself.”
With pandemic issues making the recording task more difficult, Roeser finishes by telling us how they managed to get the project on track: “The COVID-19 lockdown slowed the completion of the record and we were prevented from travelling and collaborating in person, although luckily we had already done the basic tracking.
“We resorted to video conferencing and producing each other over the internet and are fortunate that the technology exists to do that, plus some live performance cancellations gave us a little more time to carefully consider the finishing touches.
“We sent the album out to be mixed by Tom Lord-Alge and we also worked together over the internet on that.”
