POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rhythm Section, New Zeal Give Blue Oyster Cult a Second Wind

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  When Blue Oyster Cult last sped through this area a year and a half ago, the group’s performance was wildly uneven, swaggering between full-tilt abandon and the sort of lassitude that’s all too understandable in grown men still playing adolescent fantasy music as they enter their 40s.

It was easy then to imagine the Oyster Cult members soon settling down to comfy, normal jobs, with Donald (Buck Dharma) Roeser seeming a very likely candidate for greengrocer. So it was surprising Monday evening at the Coach House to find--despite rumors now that the band may indeed call it quits soon--that Blue Oyster Cult is perhaps playing better, and with more zeal, than ever.

The 22-year-old band has always been of a different stripe than other metal-bent bands, having initially been formed by rock critics R. Meltzer and Sandy Pearlman (Pearlman went on to manage the band while Meltzer contributed to its songs, as did poet Patti Smith) and always bringing a sense of humor and self-awareness to its neo-fascist imagery and gothic spires of sound. Often, the Cult’s efforts seemed like a musical coefficient to the illustrated fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, and the band did indeed wind up contributing its “Veteran of the Psychic Wars” to the Heavy Metal animated film.

That song and most of the others that went into the 18-song Coach House set showcased the standard Oyster Cult sound of overlapping riffs building into huge structures. The front line of guitarist Roeser, singer-guitarist Eric Bloom and keyboardist-guitarist Allen Lanier made those structures as palpable as ever. Making them better than ever was the rhythm section of drummer Ron Riddle and bassist Jon Rogers, who joined in recent years, and who play rings around the Bouchard brothers who once held those positions.

Riddle and Rogers consistently kicked the band into a higher gear on such Cult classics as “Dominance and Submission,” “Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” “Cities on Flame,” “Burning for You,” “Godzilla” and “This Ain’t the Summer of Love.”

The chief asset and architect of the group’s sound remains Roeser, who is both a Class-A riff monster and a nimble, inventive soloist. Unlike most metal blazers, Roeser actually knows how to construct a solo dramatically. The prime example Monday came on 1972’s “The Last Days of May” (which Roeser also sang): His extended solo slowly built from lyrical phrases to neck-wrenching urgency.

He delivered similarly impressive fret-board flurries on the instrumental “Buck’s Boogie” and the encore-closer “The Red and Black.” There were a few moments when his and the band’s energies flagged--notably on a perfunctory version of “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper”--but if the Oysters can maintain the overall propulsion of this show, they might well continue into their 50s without looking too ridiculous.

Long Beach’s Lost Souls opened with a set that wasn’t nearly as pleasing or promising. While sloppy playing sometimes can communicate the devil-may-care spirit of rock, sometimes sloppy is just sloppy. With only momentary exceptions, the Souls’ blustery playing Monday lacked the definition and personality that sometimes emerges on their album of last year, “Howling at the Moon.”

At one point, vocalist Mike Malone described their sound as “Muddy Waters meets Motorhead,” but saying and doing are two very different things. Possessing less soul or depth than the late Mr. Waters’ toenail clippings, and nowhere near the driving lunacy of Motorhead, the Lost Souls sounded more like “Foghat meets Ted Nugent,” particularly on their thudding white-slug boogie version of the Waters’ staple “I Just Want to Make Love to You.”

The band does have a nonstop powerhouse drummer in Roger Beall, and Malone’s amplified vibraphone is a sound unique to hard rock, but there was little else to raise the group above the pack of other grunge-biker bands on the scene. “Death Mask” did seem to be a curious blend of Country Joe McDonald psychedelia and Screamin’ Lord Sutch, and the new song “As if I Care” had a well-crafted sense of mood to it. That was no great accomplishment, though, since its arrangement on the verse is virtually identical to Cream’s “We’re Going Wrong,” recorded some 24 years ago.