Watchtower's Control And Resistance to be reissued

Texan prog metal pioneers Watchtower are to have their 1989 album Control And Resistance reissued through Dissonance Productions/Cherry Red Records.

The album was originally released in 1989 through Noise Records, and whilst the album didn't deliver commercial success for the band, it remains viewed a seminal release in the development of prog metal, and has been cited as a major influence on the likes of Dream Theater and Fates Warning.

“When we started, it wasn’t really a conscious decision to do what we ended up doing,” drummer Rick Colaluca told Prog Magazne recently. “It wasn’t like, ‘Okay, we’re going to do all this technical math stuff.’ It was more, ‘We love this heavy, fast stuff and we love this other, more complicated stuff – let’s do something different and incorporate both parts.

“Once we latched on to the concept of what we wanted to do with our music, we were just driven to do it. It wasn’t about competing with anyone or trying to outdo anyone. It was just about doing the same thing we all seemed to be of the same mindset about, and we pressed forward with it.

“For some people, progressive rock is boring and kind of stuffy live: ‘Okay, we’re going to be this perfect thing. We decided to lay it all on the line and go crazy. If we made mistakes here or there, fine. When we were hitting on all cylinders, it was a fucking thing of beauty. It wasn’t just out there playing a record. It was like, ‘Holy fuck, that was fucking awesome.’”

Control And Resistance will be released as a CD digipack with new liner notes by music writer Kevin Stewart-Panko on October 29. It will also be released as a limited edition purple swirl vinyl release on April 22, 2022.

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Pre-order vinyl.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.