Many guest musicians contributed to the project over this eight-year span, including Joe Satriani, Aldo Nova, and Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, but some band members were barely involved in the recording process.

It is often considered one of the heaviest albums released by Blue Öyster Cult, its music more akin to heavy metal than the melodic and commercial hard rock of their two previous works.

[5] Pearlman combined cultural references learned in his studies with elements of gothic literature and science fiction, and created a secret history about the origin of the two world wars.

[7] Established by 1967 as a critic for the seminal US music magazine Crawdaddy!,[8] Pearlman was also the mentor, manager and producer for the band Soft White Underbelly,[9] which, after various name changes, became Blue Öyster Cult, a term taken from the Imaginos script.

[33][34] Albert Bouchard's departure started a rotation of personnel in the formerly stable band roster,[35] which by 1986 left only Eric Bloom and Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser as original members.

[37][38] The release of two expensive studio albums in 1983 and 1985, which received generally bad critical response and sold poorly,[39] ruined the relationship with their demanding record label and left the band with little support and very few ideas on how to go on with their careers.

Imaginos was envisioned as a rock opera to be published as a trilogy of double albums, with a storyline encompassing about two hundred years of history, from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 20th.

He uses his ability to change identities to take the place of high-ranking officials, whose offices he uses to bring about Les Invisibles' will ("I Am the One You Warned Me Of"), introducing new knowledge and technology to the unsuspecting world ("The Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria").

[57] Having by this time spent several decades studying mysticism and astrology,[57] Imaginos discovers that Elizabethan England's rise as a superpower coincided with John Dee's acquisition of a magic obsidian mirror from Mexico, which serves as a bridge between Les Invisibles' alien world and ours, and the means to spread their influence on Earth.

[2] Some fans see Les Invisibles' actions in favour of England against Spain as a sort of vengeance for the extermination by the conquistadores of their worshippers in Central America, while others view their intervention as only part of the mysterious scheme carried on by the alien entities through the centuries ("In the Presence of Another World").

[59] The other song, "The Girl That Love Made Blind", is an Albert Bouchard composition which explains that Imaginos' powers include the capacity of moving "in and through time",[60] assuming different identities in every moment of history.

[16] After Albert Bouchard's 1981 dismissal from Blue Öyster Cult, he and Pearlman worked on the material, having secured an advance from Columbia Records[16][35] on the strength of the demos partially sung by Eric Bloom.

[77] According to Bouchard, Jeff Kawalik, Corky Stasiak, Helen Wheels, Glen Bell, Peggy Atkins and Casper McCloud were among the uncredited background vocalists which participated to these sessions.

Musicians involved in this second phase of recording included future BÖC keyboard player Tommy Zvoncheck,[79] who had already played with Clarence Clemons, Public Image Ltd and The Dream Syndicate.

[80] An almost-finished product that comprised more than ninety minutes of music and whose thirteen tracks included re-arranged versions of "Astronomy" and "Subhuman" (retitled "Blue Öyster Cult"), "Gil Blanco County", the ballad "The Girl That Love Made Blind" and a couple of chorales,[81] was presented to Columbia Records executives in 1984.

[82] While struggling with the long, complex and expensive production of the Blue Öyster Cult's album Club Ninja, Pearlman associated himself with Daniel J. Levitin, A&R director of the local punk label 415 Records,[83] with whom he shared academic interests in neuroscience.

[85] In September 1986, when the poor sales of Club Ninja resulted in a commercial failure[86] and the group disbanded, the lack of new material from the band for the foreseeable future prompted Pearlman to propose Imaginos to Columbia Records as a new Blue Öyster Cult album.

[33] He obtained a small budget from the record label to remix the album and to add the vocals of Roeser and Bloom, singers of all the hits produced by Blue Öyster Cult.

[33] Pearlman, with the help of engineers Paul Mandl and Steve Brown,[2] spent his time cleaning up, re-arranging and remixing the original recordings, using state-of-the-art technology[85] and the collaborations of studio musicians.

[89] Roeser went to California in early 1987 to record his lead vocals and some guitar parts,[35] while Tommy Zvoncheck, still a member of Blue Öyster Cult, re-recorded most of the keyboards on the album.

[93][94] Critics and fans point to elements of progressive rock also present in the music, which create a dark and "ominous"[33] atmosphere that fits the obscure content of the song lyrics.

The inner sleeve, besides the credits and Sandy Pearlman's lengthy notes on the Imaginos story, sports a large black and white photo by landscape British photographer Simon Marsden of Duntrune Castle in Argyllshire, Scotland.

[101] The credits printed on the sleeve of the first release were largely incomplete and made no distinction between the recording sessions of 1982-84 and those of 1987-88, apparently validating the false assumption that the original line-up of Blue Öyster Cult had reunited for the making of the album.

[109] Imaginos fared better with CBS International, which distributed the album abroad and produced a music video for "Astronomy" in the UK, which aired in coincidence with the European tour dates of 1989.

[33] His economic and membership requests were both rejected, due to resistances within the label and within the band,[77] so he filed a lawsuit in 1989 against the management of Blue Öyster Cult and Columbia Records to receive payment for his work.

[33] The lawsuit was settled out of court,[82] but his resentment towards Sandy Pearlman for what he felt was a theft of his work never eased,[33][82] eliminating any chance of future collaborations for the completion of the Imaginos saga.

[120] A review of their performance at The Ritz in New York on January 6, 1989, highlights the good shape and musicianship of the band, but remarks that the new songs were played with considerably less enthusiasm than the rest of the show.

[93] For Don Kaye of Kerrang!, the album is "the best BÖC slab since (...) Cultösaurus Erectus and harks back in style and attitude towards the brilliance of masterpieces like Secret Treaties and Spectres".

[123] A reviewer from the Italian music criticism site Storia della Musica points out that the album is now a 'cult' item for its rarity, its content and the scarce love shown by the band for this work.

He writes that "it could have been the Tommy or The Dark Side of the Moon of BÖC" but, "despite the profound influences it evokes", its "mutilated and sabotaged form" and the disinterest of the musicians involved makes Imaginos only a wasted opportunity.