Watchtower - Control and Resistance (1989)^{Release ID: 4088}

The first Watchtower album didn't do an awful lot for me. The musicianship was perfectly decent, but I found the vocalist to be extremely annoying and the production to be rather underwhelming. I'm pleased to say that the second album is a much better offering, but I still don't love it completely as it falls down in the same areas as the debut.

The musicianship is still great, in fact it's gone up a notch. Extremely progressive metal with some strange timings, great riffs and good solid bass work. The middle section of the album is damn impressive with The Fall of Reason and Control and Resistance being awesome examples of dark progressive thrash metal. I can hear Into Eternity when listening to The Fall of Reason and considering this was released over 10 years prior, it's ground-breaking.

But the same vocalist is around. He's better on this album than the debut but he still sounds ridiculous on occasion, with his high pitched classic heavy metal squeals getting on my nerves. There are also some tracks that don't quite meet the brilliance of the previously mentioned epics. The shorter tracks such as Instruments of Random Murder, Hidden Instincts and Dangerous Toy all have nice sections but flounder in others. Finally, the production is much better than the debut, but still lacking the clarity that music of this quality deserves. All up I'd say this is an important, enjoyable album but let down slightly by the above flaws.

Why haven't I fully discovered this masterpiece yet!? This is masterful wizardry made by early prog-thrashers Watchtower! Control and Resistance is where they add jazzy elements to their sound, something absolute original at that time. I've been in a marathon of reviewing albums from technical death metal bands like Atheist, Death, and Pestilence, and this is the album that inspired those bands and many more to mix tech-death with pieces of progressive jazz. I think we can thank two talented masterminds here for that brilliant idea, starting with the amazing guitarist Ron Jarzombek. He can handle time signatures and tempos in an impressive way that barely anyone else can with technical riffs and jazzy solos. The audible bass playing of Doug Keyser is PERFECT!!! Standing by with the guitar like a 3-legged race. What a duo of geniuses!

Of course we can't ignore the other two band members, including vocalist Alan Tecchio. His high vocals are a usual part of progressive thrash, performed so d*mn well. It's impressive how high he can go while following the music. It sounds like he can do it normally with no struggle. Excellent! And finally, there's Rick Colaluca, whose style is very much the same as you would hear in jazz fusion. Imagine have an octopus drummer who's a fan of jazz and Megadeth, that's Rick right there! He has to make all those intricate time signature patterns, and yet it's all performed flawlessly.

Keyser wrote and co-wrote all of the songs in this album, starting with "Instruments Of Random Murder", where the instrumentation is killer and can be deadly for those who can't perform the complexity. Luckily, Keyser performs his bass perfectly and survives. He would later encounter "The Eldritch", so strange and otherworldly for most people to catch up, and yet he can! If he ever needs help in "Mayday in Kiev", Jarzombek has helped with the writing assisting him with the jazzy guitar progression as usual.

The shining highlight of this album is the epic "The Fall of Reason", with insane jazzy soloing from Jarzombek as Keyser continues his amazing bass journey. The title track is where Keyser really needs to control his pace in order to play the higher-level complexity smoothly.

For "Hidden Instincts", Jarzombek joins the writing journey once again, and this time, he's assisting Keyser throughout the remainder of this album, as they both conquer hidden surprises. That cycle continues in "Life Cycles". And finally, "Dangerous Toy" is the most dangerous ending for anyone who has made it that far. With the amazing bass and the strong guitar of Jarzombek, BOOM!!!! They've vanquished the terror with their impressive skills. They reign victorious in this excellent adventure, no fails at all!

So yeah, Control and Resistance deserves a perfect 5 stars for being able to add jazz into prog-thrash without messing anything up, with all that inspiring technicality and masterful writing. I might just dig further into more of the prog/tech-thrash of bands like Sieges Even and Toxik, but maybe another time. This is a jazzy metal treat to love!

Favorites: "Instruments Of Random Murder", "The Eldritch", "The Fall of Reason", "Hidden Instincts", "Dangerous Toy"