Watchman Premiere The End of All Flesh in Full; Out Saturday
The second full-length from Indiana-based solo artist Roy Waterford, aka Watchman, is titled The End of All Flesh, and it’s being released on vinyl and digitally this coming Saturday through Wet Records and Glory or Death Records. The project has worked quickly across the last two years, issuing the debut EP, Behold a Pale Horse (review here), in 2020 before following up with last year’s Doom of Babylon debut long-player. The sophomore outing begins with its longest track (immediate points) in the just-under-six-minute “Pour Out the Vials,” and the hazy psych-driven stoner lurch is palpable in the nodding undulations, like if Electric Wizard decided momentarily to give it a rest on watching old VHS horror tapes and mellowed out a bit on the cultistry. Not to say that “Fire and Brimstone,” the hookier drawl of “Death is Coming” — a roughed-up take on doomgaze made more vital by the solo performance — or the fuzz swinger “The Smoke,” which appears right ahead of the closing title-track as The End of All Flesh wraps in suitably melancholic, misanthropic fashion, the drums barely there behind the gruel-fed guitar and slow lurching groove.
All told, the album runs seven songs and 36 minutes. It is largely unipolar in its point of view, willfully dug in to its own riffing and able accordingly to convey a due sense of trance. There are full-band progressions happening,
mind you. These are songs, constructed and executed in layers and put together at the behest of one person, but it’s Waterford‘s vision that most unites the material throughout. What if Six Organs of Admittance was also Sleep at their most miserable? It is a somewhat troubled sonic blend, but that’s very obviously the intention, to bring that sense of bedroom folk intimacy to something no less personal but manifest in an outwardly heavier way. Familiar elements resound, but Waterford‘s doom is ultimately his own.
And if you can’t hang with a half-hour-plus of wretchedness and riffs, I humbly suggest that perhaps doom isn’t the thing after all and that The End of All Flesh may be overwhelming despite and in part because of its empty and manipulated spaces. What I’ll say though is that while this second Watchman album was clearly designed or at least arranged after the fact to maximize an overarching flow, the individual songs that comprise it nonetheless are pointed in the impressions they make. The only thing stopping Waterford is nothing, and left to his own devices, one wonders how much deeper into the doomed psyche he might plunge as a forward step coming off this release. Eventually there’s a floor down there, you know.
Enjoy the album and thanks for reading:
Watchman, The End of All Flesh album premiere
After the very well-received “Doom Of Babylon”, the creation of multi-instrumentalist and producer Roy Waterford (Indiana), Watchman returns once again with his second album “The End Of All Flesh”.
Through its slow and mesmerizing riffs, and distant and mysterious vocals, listeners are pulled into a mystical and chaotic journey.
Watchman echoes a dark and outstanding atmosphere. Roy tells us that he taps into the gritty, fuzzy 70s sound, combined with his Stoned Doomed inspirations mentioning the names Electric Wizard and Sleep.
Amidst the monolithic riffs, we are engulfed in strong psychedelic touches.
The fantastic Album Art for “The End Of All Flesh” was created by Enrico Zappalà Castorina (MontDoom)
About vinyl:
Watchman is teaming up with Wet Records once again to bring their second album, “The End Of All Flesh” into this world on vinyl and digitally. Which happens next Saturday, June 11th.
Glory or Death Records on Facebook
Glory or Death Records on Instagram
Glory or Death Records on Bandcamp
Glory or Death Records webstore
Tags: Glory or Death Records, Indiana, The End of All Flesh, Watchman, Watchman The End of All Flesh, Wet Records
