TesseracT - War of Being VR + Desktop Game

Plus new Blue Öyster Cult song-by-song book

I’m much more of a tabletop gamer than a player of video RPGs, but I was excited to see this announcement of the band TesseracT’s involvement in the VR + Desktop game War of Being. Here’s the Steam trailer for the game:

Taking music immersion in video games to a new level, they have a new album of the same name coming out on the 15th of September.

The following video is the “Official Visualiser” for their excellent song “The Grey,” which takes place in The Strangeland environments you can explore in the War Of Being VR + Desktop:

Lead vocalist Daniel Tompkins is the Lead Director and Designer on the game, and you can learn much more about the War of Being projects in this GGRECON interview.

Dominance and Submission: The Blue Öyster Cult Canon

In a previous Critical Hit Parader newsletter, I announced that I was a contributor to an upcoming book about Blue Öyster Cult. I am now thrilled to share that Dominance and Submission: The Blue Öyster Cult Canon by Martin Popoff has been published by Wymer Publishing and is now available.

Here’s the full book description:

In Dominance and Submission: The Blue Öyster Cult Canon, three-time BOC book author Martin Popoff turns the microphone away from himself to moderate a gathered and esteemed panel of Cult experts for deep-dive discussions on every Blue Öyster Cult studio album. No stone is left unturned, as we look at the personalities in the band, every song, every album cover, the band’s highly regarded lyrics as poetry, their music as ground-breaking and genre-defying.

Dominance and Submission is set-up in Q&A format, allowing for pure and piercing prose that is also conversational and easy-access. In the end, the author is confident that the wise words from this cabal of music authorities—with Popoff not pulling any punches either, joining in the fun when the door is opened—will have you playing the band’s “canon” with a renewed appreciation as to the complexity laced throughout such albums as Tyranny and Mutation, Agents of Fortune—with its career defining hit “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”—Spectres, Fire of Unknown Origin and the daunting Imaginos. But have no fear, Martin and his team have taken us right up to the band’s effusively received comeback album, The Symbol Remains, bringing band and fan full circle—umlauts included, of course.

Finally, augmenting the learning (and listening) experience, Dominance and Submission provides a plethora of images that make these essays on the band’s fifteen albums that much more visceral. Bottom line: if you thought Martin had covered everything you need to know in his definitive Agents of Fortune: The Blue Oyster Cult Story, think again—the analysis proffered by his panel even sent Popoff back to the sacred texts for a rock ‘n’ roll re-imagining. If he’s been made smarter by what these guys have to say, you will be too.

I plan on giving away a copy of the book to a Critical Hit Parader subscriber in the coming weeks. Look for details in an upcoming newsletter.

Cars Wars

One last plug…I was on a recent live panel on the Contrarians Youtube channel discussing Move Like This, the final album by the Cars. I think my opinion differed from my fellow panelists, but you can watch for yourself here:

We have been on a roll with the Cars on the Contrarians lately, with recent episodes covering Panorama and Door to Door.