Watchtower

Abigail Williams is becoming a regular household name in the black metal industry. They began by mixing deathcore and black metal, which are virtually two polar opposites and got mixed press about it. But it gave the band enough attention and Candlelight, the same label who had signed Emperor, picked them up.

Thankfully the deathcore elements that were present on their earliest material are almost completely devoid with only some resemblances in the vocal department remaining. What Abigail Williams have done here is just take Emperor’s sound from IX Equilibrium and Prometheus and add a bit of Cradle of Filth in. This is pretty much just standard symphonic black metal.

Everything that characterized Emperor’s sound can be found here; fast guitars with sweeping tremolo riffs, furious drumming at hyperblast pace, and beautiful keyboard melodies. This all provides for a very chaotic yet intriguing atmosphere, which was Emperor’s trademark. Abigail Williams mixes it up a bit by adding a few breaks with some keyboard melodies with some screechy voiceovers that resemble Cradle of Filth far too much.

The vocals are run of the mill screeching but performed fairly poorly. At times they go into slight choking territory resembling deathcore squeals which is not a good thing. There is no real aggression in the vocal performance at all. It just sounds like Ken Sorceren is screeching just for the sake of it. Occasionaly I struggle to hold myself from laughter when he just squeals, “I Feel the Darkness” over and over throughout the song. Very juvenile lyrics.

The guitars mostly play fast tremolo picking riffs and about midway through a solo is performed that shows that the guitarist is proficient but it just sounds out of place and goes no where. The riffs show some attempts of variation to keep things from getting overly dull but they lack the power of Emperor with whom they are trying to sound like. The drums just blast most of the time only leaving room for a little break for the keyboards to shine at times.

The song really doesn’t seem to have any real direction and if this is a good representation of their debut album then it would be very disappointing. All Abigail Williams does is just rip off Emperor and Cradle of Filth far too much and bring nothing of their own to the table. If it wasn’t for all the promotion of this band and the stir they caused back when they combined deathcore and black metal they never would have risen to the status they have today.