If you’ve never heard of WatchTower, you probably must be a baby to progressive metal (welcome!) and you are looking for info on this totally awesome band you heard about, from somewhere a dime-beer store. Or, if you please, you’re monumentally sick of all those shitty progressive metal albums European bands are churning out that you’re looking for fresher inspiration. Either way, to WatchTower.
But the irony is on me – I learned of WatchTower only about 6 years ago, when I was shopping for records specifically for Superior, the ‘pioneers’ of German Progressive Power Metal. Although I had WatchTower’s debut in my library for a good long time I rarely came across ‘Control and Resistance’ amongst the 500 or so metal albums in my CPU stock – the notion that I was in possession of one of the most priceless of rock albums in the progressive metal universe, didn’t strike me. And 6 years ago, about 2004, I “discovered” the album. ‘Control and Resistance’ remains the big daddy in my all-time top slot.
The album
The problem with ‘genr-erational’ icons – for instance Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Metallic or Dream Theater – is that you have no reference or index to measure them with. The same with WatchTower. Everything is said and done. No disputes. Only one, unto itself – the only thing you can do is watch grow longer the long string of icons listing them as influence. And for reviewers like me – cut, spliced, salted and dried crisp – stuff about WatchTower can be as exciting as paying your parking ticket. Not so for their music though.
So this is what I envisage from the review on WatchTower’s Control & Resistance, the biggest ‘début’ of albums: If you’re new to Prog stuff, I hope to give you an idea what the ado is all about. But if you are a battle-wearied, nasty piece of progressive metal honcho, don’t waste your time here – return to your unkempt nest at Prog Archives.
Album Control & Resistance: The Tracks
1. Instruments Of Random Murder
2. The Eldritch
3. Mayday In Kiev
4. The Fall Of Reason
5. Control And Resistance
6. Hidden Instincts
7. Life Cycles
8. Dangerous Toy
I’ll give you just 5 words to describe WatchTower’s album in its entire luminosity and sublimity: Oh My Freaking Awesome Whatwasthat. Their first album, Energetic Assembly, hinted the monumental skills the band possessed. But it was only with Control and Resistance that the dam broke through. Basically, many consider Control and Resistance to be the band’s ‘debut’ gauging the impact it still has on progressive rock genres.
From the iconic ‘Instruments of Random Murder’ to the frighteningly magnificent ‘Hidden Instinct,’ you have never listened to an album as overwhelming as Control and Resistance. Of course, “younger listeners” may cleverly quote Spiral Architect’s ‘Skeptic’s Universe’ to be the one prog album that comes closest to the sublimity of WatchTower’s C&R. But only just about. And it is sacrilegious to compare influences with the source.
Awesome, sublimely intricate arrangements, numbing salvos of compositional diversity that converge into a single heady smash that rearranges your head; insufferably convoluted tempo rephrasing; frighteningly overwhelming guitar passages not even John Petrucchi has got around to figuring out (Did someone just whisper Metropolis Medley? Get out, you Lady Gaga lover!). Just one thing, if you’re a melody freak, sorry go find Threshold or Spastic Ink. Alan Tecchio isn’t even singing! But that’s just it.
In brief, I confess, I just don’t have the right babble to describe what WatchTower’s debut is all about – you have to listen to it to get a sense of why the album is the point of reference for generations of progressive metal musicians and well, fans.
Few albums in the history of rock music have captured the tyranny of skill, sophistication and the beauty of musical artistry as did WatchTower’s Control and Resistance. Control and Resistance is to WatchTower what Images and Words is to Dream Theater, Stairway to Heaven is to Led Zeppelin, Black is to Metallica…what the darned heck, foggit it.
WatchTower’s already the first, remember.
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