Review by Ben for Watchtower - Control and Resistance (1989)

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.