Blue Öyster Cult (/ˈɔɪ.stər/ OY-stər; sometimes abbreviated BÖC or BOC) is an American rock band formed on Long Island, New York, in the hamlet of Stony Brook, in 1967.

[1] The band's fusion of hard rock with psychedelia, and penchant for occult, fantastical and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, had a major influence on heavy metal music.

[7] Blue Öyster Cult was formed in 1967 as Soft White Underbelly (a name the group would occasionally use in the 1970s and 1980s to play small club gigs around the United States and UK)[8] in a communal house at Stony Brook University on Long Island when rock critic Sandy Pearlman overheard a jam session consisting of fellow Stony Brook classmate Donald Roeser and his friends.

[9] The band's original lineup consisted of guitarist Roeser, drummer Albert Bouchard, keyboardist Allen Lanier, Les Braunstein and bassist Andrew Winters.

Writer Richard Meltzer, also a Stony Brook University student, provided the band with lyrics from their early days up through their most recent studio album.

It contained songs such as "The Red and the Black" (an ode to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a rewrite of "I'm on the Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" from their debut album, and also a reference to the novel of the same name by Stendhal), "Hot Rails to Hell" and "Baby Ice Dog", the first of the band's many collaborations with Patti Smith.

The band's third album, Secret Treaties (1974),[19] received positive reviews, featuring songs such as "Career of Evil" (co-written by Patti Smith), "Dominance and Submission" and "Astronomy".

The album found the band returning to their hard rock roots, and although both of the Bouchard brothers and guitarist Roeser all got lead vocal turns, Bloom would sing the majority of the tracks.

It contained other fan favorites such as "Joan Crawford" (inspired by the book and film Mommie Dearest) and "Veteran of the Psychic Wars", another song co-written by Moorcock.

After leaving the band, Albert Bouchard spent five years working on a solo album based on Sandy Pearlman's poem "Imaginos".

This approach met with some success, especially on its highest-charting single, Roeser's "Shooting Shark", co-written by Patti Smith and featuring Randy Jackson on bass, which reached number 83 on the charts.

Blue Öyster Cult hired drummer Jimmy Wilcox and keyboardist Tommy Zvoncheck to finish the album Club Ninja, which was poorly received, with only "Dancin' in the Ruins," one of several songs on the record written entirely by outside songwriters, enjoying minimal success on radio and MTV.

Allen Lanier then was offered to rejoin and agreed, so the new line-up now featured three founding members, along with Jon Rogers returning on bass and Ron Riddle as their newest drummer.

Joe Bouchard and Allen Lanier had earlier contributed some minor keyboard and backing vocal parts to the album, allowing all five original members to be credited.

Castellano switched to rhythm guitar and keyboards (Castellano also filled in on lead guitar and vocals for an ailing Buck Dharma in two shows in 2005), and the position of bassist was taken up by Rudy Sarzo (previously a member of Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne and Dio), with the band employing Danny Miranda and Jon Rogers as guest bassists to fill in when Sarzo was unavailable.

Also in 2012, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Blue Öyster Cult, the then-current incarnation of the band reunited for the first time in 25 years with other original members Joe and Albert Bouchard and Allen Lanier as guests for a special event in New York.

He also stated that former bassist Danny Miranda would be playing with the band for the remainder of the year due to Sulton's prior touring commitments with Todd Rundgren.

In February 2020, Richie Castellano posted a short video to Facebook featuring himself and Eric Bloom, stating that the band were working on the new Blue Öyster Cult record remotely by using ConnectionOpen online audio collaboration tool.

[31][32] The span of nineteen years between Curse of the Hidden Mirror and The Symbol Remains marks the longest gap between studio albums in Blue Öyster Cult's career.

[33] In October 2022, during their European headlining tour, Blue Öyster Cult supported Deep Purple at five arena shows in the United Kingdom.

They have acknowledged the influence of artists such as Alice Cooper,[34] Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, MC5,[34] The Blues Project,[39] Jimi Hendrix,[40] and Black Sabbath.

Key members of the New York punk scene Patti Smith, Helen "Wheels" Robbins and Jim Carroll - all friends of the band - contributed from the mid-1970s.

[41][42] In order to add to their mystique the band would often use out-of-context fragments of Pearlman's unpublished sci-fi poetry cycle The Soft Doctrines of Imaginos as lyrics, rendering their meaning obscure.

Pearlman had also come up with the band's earlier name, "Soft White Underbelly", from a phrase used by Winston Churchill in describing Italy during World War II.

[46] The hook-and-cross logo was designed by fellow Stony Brook student Bill Gawlik for his master's thesis[10][47] in January 1972,[48] and appears on all of the band's albums.

[53] The logo's "... metaphysical, alchemical and mythological connotations, combined with its similarity to some religious symbols gave it a flair of decadence and mystery ..."[48] The band was billed, for the only time, as "The Blue Öyster Cult" on the cover and label of their second album, Tyranny and Mutation.

[54][55][4] They have influenced many acts including Iron Maiden,[56] Metallica,[57][58] Fates Warning,[59] Iced Earth,[60] Cirith Ungol,[61] Alice in Chains,[62] Twisted Sister,[63] Ratt,[64][65] Steel Panther,[66] Green River (and later Mudhoney),[67] Body Count,[68] Possessed,[69] Candlemass,[70] Saint Vitus,[71] Trouble,[72] Opeth,[73] White Zombie,[74] Kvelertak,[75][76] HIM,[77] Turbonegro,[78] Radio Birdman,[79][80] The Cult,[81] The Minutemen,[82] Firehose,[83] Hoodoo Gurus,[84] Widespread Panic,[85] Queens of the Stone Age,[86] Umphrey's McGee,[87] Stabbing Westward,[88] Royal Trux,[89] and Moe.

The lyrics of "Astronomy" have been named by author Shawn St. Jean as inspirational to the later chapters of his fantasy novel Clotho's Loom,[91] wherein Sandy Pearlman's "Four Winds Bar" provides the setting for a portion of the action.

Titles and lines from the band's songs provided structure and narrative for the third book in Robert Galbraith's (a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling), series of Cormoran Strike novels, Career of Evil.

[97] The opening sequence of the miniseries adaptation of The Stand (1994) by Stephen King, and covered by The Mutton Birds for Peter Jackson's horror-comedy film The Frighteners (1996).