Kill.Fucking.Everyone.

At certain instances the pretensions, dreams, hopes, desires, or urgings of death and black metal musicians cross each other at fortunate waypoints and the great divide between aspirations and realizations can be breached by random factors (Clausewitz's "friction") completely outside their band's control. Certain groups, knowing the fortuitous results that can arise from such instances, deliberately cultivate their appearance and existence, like priests bowing before some arcane effigy of abandon or some site of a possible providential manifestation. Enter improvisation and the cult of the "everyday" pressures that supposedly inspire this violent music we all love. Watchmaker do not shy away from these scene-illegal atmospheres/realms of the mundane and all-too-real - in fact they passionately court them and (paying lip service to these "inspirations" at least) try to pierce them in ripe locations in order to bleed out some of the "everyday" into their creations. Do they succeed? I believe they do, at least on parts of this recording.

It doesn't matter to me if this record (19 tracks) was completely "written" in the studio or not, or if the band had all the riffs assembled in different configurations or just made changes at the last moment, or had a certain number of songs finished and then just altered them in different ways to produce separate compositions, etc. The point is that it doesn't matter: the point is that there isn't a point. Watchmaker wanted to capture raw emotion and spontaneity - they succeed with those aspirations (see the above paragraph) here, but they also fail. They convince because the sheer power of their combined chemistry can overwhelm through bravado, anger, and stimulated aural violence, and on a certain emotional level and in its closest corollaries or tangential tributaries of the most basic levels of logical/musical understanding this is enough to sway one's opinion towards the favorable. The minor chords, the "dissonance", noise, clashing half-harmonies, aborted dual-guitar interactions, the demanding (spoiled infant) percussion, the monotonous, edge-of-a-cliff, nervous breakdown vocals (intrepid shouter Livoti supposedly recorded his contributions after a sleepless night watching the birth of his first child), all of this equals futurity, modernity presented for (un)easy consumption, of course, but also following firmly in the established (at this point) Willowtip tradition of post-everything attempts to squeeze the rotten remains of metal and hardcore for one last satisfying gasp of adolescent aggression. So we have guitars that reference metal and hardcore, drums that descend from Brutal Truth, a bassist that appears only rarely (and as such he is completely traditional, but that's not his fault), and a demented, possessed, all-too-earnest frontman screaming about the horrors of the daily grind. It is compelling in limited doses... it fails, as I said above, in the later tracks where the formula begins to press down paths already too well explored, but for at least half of this album Watchmaker is adequately satisfied, I think, in feeling they are right on the tail of whatever elusive mythical beast of self-expression and artistic completion they are chasing.

In limited doses, again, this is often exactly what I need at certain points in the day. It becomes something of a trial of patience and/or endurance to make it through all 19 tracks, however. I would like to hear what this band could do with a full year's worth of slow writing, slow thinking, and slow planning... the talent, anger, and desire are certainly there.

UA

Erebus Magazine
http://erebuszine.blogspot.com

An analogy: this is the worst day of your life. Another eight hours at your white-collar sweatshop, eight hours sacrificed to the mindless mass of western capitalism. Everyone you work with is insane, smiling moronically as they pester you with their meaningless tasks and inane chatter. They won't leave you alone so you can do your job that you hate; but it doesn't matter because you didn't get that miniscule raise you were promised. Which means you can't pay your rent, which is already past due, which means you're going to get kicked out, and have to move into an even smaller and dirtier apartment and have an even harder time trying to regain your sanity during those few precious hours when you aren't slaving at the office or passed out from exhaustion in your bed. And you won't be able to afford those parts you need to get your rustbucket of a car running again, which means you're stuck taking the bus with all the homeless drug addicts and drunks and fat old ladies who take up three quarters of the bench so you can't even sit down.

Today was a bad day, but this album isn't the soundtrack to it. This album is the soundtrack to tomorrow morning, when you show up to work holding the handgun you purchased last night with what little money you had remaining in your bank account. You can imagine the brief introduction as the elevator ride to your office, the pounding sound increasing in volume along with the adrenaline pounding in your head as the anticipation builds. Then the doors open and the record explodes into a chaotic blur of violent sound.

As hectic as it is, the music takes a few rounds of listening before you can begin to digest the contents. To simplify this process it can be useful to isolate the individual instrumental elements and observe how they contribute to the whole: the vocals are a mass of incoherent screaming, insane ramblings of every bad thought you ever had shouted one after another at the top of your lungs. You can only make out the odd word unless you look at the liner notes where a mess of scrawled thoughts illustrate the subject matter nicely:

Your diminishing income finances your pain
Your compliance agreement never complain

Slitting my wrists just to compete
Refinancing my life away

In the next aisle between nihilism and despair
Lies the purchase that needs you

The barrels of life pushed deep in your mouth
Itchy fingers in need of a scratch

Squeeze the trigger

Relentless hate and despair they may express, but you can also hear a sense of jubilation at points on this album. There are moments when the release of anger leads to triumph, to proclamations that this activity is a satisfying one and that victory has been achieved. Perhaps this is most apparent during the one moment where the protagonist's objective is revealed most clearly to the listener: the unmistakable repetition of "I will...Kill you..." during "Wallet Sized Dental Records".

The percussion is prevalent on this recording, punctuating the chaos at gracefully targeted points like the bullets fired into each coworker that comes into sight. It feels as if the drumming is the only thing keeping this album from descending into total impenetrable noise, as all the other elements often avoid following any strict or predictable structure. One could almost imagine that parts of this recording are heavily improvised - the vocals most obviously are freeform and only sporadically coincide rhythmically with the rest of the noise. Even the riffing rarely stops to repeat a clearly defined theme, instead depending heavily on rapid movements between a set of a few low-end chords. During such instances the musical whole shows a focus on rhythm and chaotic noise instead of melody, but this focus allows the scattered moments of melody and transitional riffs to stand out memorably over the abrasive background. An appropriate example of this is found in the track "Civic Bloodlust"�, where one of the album's more notable main themes carries the song while being surrounded by nearly anti-melodic verses; this contrast works well to enforce the impact of a rare moment of clarity when it is returned to. The balance between bedlam and lucidity is certainly in the former's favour, but this formula makes the songs quite memorable for such a noisy album.

The term "songs", however, isn't the most appropriate one to use when discussing this album. It would be inaccurate to describe it as a collection of clearly defined movements; instead each track bleeds into the next like so much white collar blood. This is a work best experienced in its brusque entirety so that the progression from one moment of insanity to another isn't destroyed and each moment is preserved in its morbid context. The brevity of the album not only follows the traditional grindcore standard but works to preserve the intense nature of the subject manner, before any thoughts of “is this really a good idea” can occur the damage has been done and the recording is over.

A black metal influence in the musical aspect surfaces at points throughout this album; grindcore for extreme metal fans makes for a concise description (Pig Destroyer is the popular comparison that comes to mind). But while similarities exist in riffing and vocal delivery, it is clear that grind is the main force at work here. The black metal characteristics end at the auditory level, as this album is firmly rooted not in the symbolism of that genre, but in the harsh reality of hardcore punk. The physical presentation enforces this, what few pentagrams that appear are outweighed by the harsh white packaging, the ink on water colour scrapbook-style lyrical presentation, and an appropriately misanthropic quote from a George Saunders short story. So while lacking metaphorical ambition in the black metal sense, this album still serves a real purpose – not as an allegorical exploration but as an anger management tool. This isn’t something to make you think, this is something your psychiatrist would prescribe (“Whenever you have those feelings I want you to take a deep breath and listen to this album”).

Problems can arise when an album relies so heavily on pure emotion, the artist can be so busy reacting to a situation that there is no room left for a coherent message of any greater depth. Here, however, the musical execution of the emotional reaction proves successful. A greater attempt at artistic ambition could cause the extremely tensed tendons of the album to snap, destroying all focus and consequentially the album's enjoyable nature. We are left with an album that while simplistic in concept offers much to the listener musically; intricate concentrations of sound reward the listener that takes the time to decipher them with a listening experience that remains satisfying over repeated plays.

As the music ends, so does our ongoing analogy. "Steaming Pile Of Outcome Measures" collapses into a weakened state of chaos as the expenditure of energy and the inevitable police retaliation have taken their toll on our protagonist. Before fading into silence we hear one last outburst of violence; probably you've gone down shooting or taken a suicidal shot to the head. Either way, this has been a fulfilling endeavor.

This band has succeeded in accomplishing the nearly impossible... an album that does not sound much like classic heavy metal, but also is not modern in any way. They have created extreme metal through a simple formula: take metal, and carry it to its extreme. And this does not mean stupid asscore drumming, or ghey breakdowns, or idiotic clean vocals, or meandering acoustic passages, or god only knows what modern bands do because they don't want to sound like Slayer.

Well, these guys sound like Slayer. Fuck Panzer Division Marduk. Fuck Slaughter of the Soul. THIS is the worthy successor to Reign in Blood. Oh, it's not quite as good as Reign in Blood, but it aspires to the same ideals - namely, pushing the envelope forward, as opposed to sideways or upside down. This is a complete fucking blur, and still it's full of riffs. It's misanthropic without descending into self-parody (see Strapping Young Lad). It's fast without losing complete focus.

Unfortunately, it's not a perfect album. It shares some of the drawbacks of Reign in Blood - namely, the self-similarity and macroscopic incoherence in songwriting. The individual riffs are all discernable, but most of the songs sound remarkably similar, and the album isn't all that memorable after just a few listens. I remember there being some faster and some slower passages, but I couldn't tell you which song had which. Then again, I don't think it was ever designed to be a collection of individual songs, as much as one half-hour hyperblast of malevolence. The longest song on here is about 2 minutes, and most are under a minute and a half.

When all is said and done, it's a decent album. The vocals are a bit too monotone and incomprehensible (there's one repeated chorus of "I will kill you!" and then the rest is completely beyond my understanding), and again most of the songs sound very similar. But if you like extreme music, you'll probably dig this. Hell, I dig this and I hate extreme music. It succeeds because while it's completely off the deep end, it doesn't completely shit on musicality. There's nothing pretentious to be found here. They play fast and furious without sounding like toolbags. Good job.

I've honestly never heard anything this furious before in my life. Watchmaker combine noisy old school grind with the almost-melodicism of rawer black metal riffing to make one hell of an angry yet listenable beast.

One of the greatest things about this album, asides from its unparalleled conviction, is that despite the grinding approach, fuzzy production and short songs, Watchmaker nevertheless maintain a high standard of songwriting through which they showcase and develop effective riffs and varying tempos throughout the album and individual songs, some songs such as Irrational Hatesoaked Fury and Demonically Entrenched building speed from mid-paced to scorching over time, resulting in a very energetic and cathartic mode of expression. Generally every song has a standout, sadistic riff, memorable structure or tempo changeup, or unfortgettable vocal arrangement, resulting in that rare grind album that, after relatively few listens, you can actually pick favourite, standout tracks from.

I'd reccommend listening to Irrational Hatesoaked Fury, as it pretty much has everything memorable about Watchmaker, and is likely the best track. Soul-peircing screaming, gradually accelerating tempos, and some interesting and abrasive palm-muted riffing.

Overall a fairly unique album and one worth hearing out a couple times at least. Only thing stopping it getting a nilistically raging 100% is the slightly muddy production hiding the nuances of the good riffing and the as-mentioned one-dimensional emotional nature of it.

OK, what we have here is quite simply some of the loudest, angriest, craziest, most cathartic "music" that will ever grace your ears. Most of it is pretty noisy, and this kind of music is certainly only listenable only if you're in that angry as hell mood. The album title describes it all...Kill. Fucking. Everyone. And if this was turned up loud enough, you'd be able to do just that. The drums are pounding, lots of blasts and not-so-technical stuff, but technicality isn't what you should be looking for in neither grind nor black metal, so it's good for what it is. The guitars are almost indistinguishable from the rest of the blend, or "noise, if you will. All of the songs take a bit of old-school grind, and combine it with some raw black metal style riffs, drums, vocals, and production. Most songs are pretty damn short, but if they were any longer, I'm pretty sure I would actually try to kill.fucking.everyone. About the vocals. Imagine a man set on fire. Now imagine that man being set on fire again. Now imagine him being set on fire again. And again. And again. Put bluntly, the vocals sound like a man who is basically undying though on fire. Pretty...creepy? Yes. Evil and maniacal? Yes. Does it work in the context? Hell yes, the vocals are almost the best part of the album. They just add to the feeling that Watchmaker were aiming at inducing in you...that feeling of pure fucking anger. This is some pure, undiluted savagery. Definitely check it out, but you should really ask your doctor if it's alright or you may be experiencing heart attacks, and other such symptoms.