Watch Them Die - Watch Them Die

*=Staff's pick	Torn Pages* Unleashed Fall From Grace The Struggle To See You Bleed Sadist Ways* Resurrection*

Genre	Thrash/Death Metal	Patrick Virgil/Greg V.	Vocals
Tracks	7	Greg Valencia	Guitar
Runningtime	42 Min.	Jase Freakley	Guitar
Label	Century Media	Pat Mello	Bass
Release	26 Jan. 2004	Ira Harris	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Slayer, Death, Arise

Angry and aggressive metalcore that is a mixture of thrash and death metal that I was ready to dismiss after I first listened to the debut album from Watch Them Die. But the album stayed in my player and by time it grew on me, the melodies started to appear and as I got in to the music it got better overtime I listened to it, up till a certain point when it stopped and settled as an average album.
Watch Them Die uses a more common occurring way to handle the vocals by using two vocalists, it is not that unusual to hear a male and a female vocalist share the singing as it is to have two male sharing the more "normal" vocals with typical death growls.

Watch Them Die has in similarity with the Swedish death metal act Arise gathered inspiration from Slayer, and in the case with Watch Them Die it is the earlier albums from Slayer that probably has had a big impact on guitarists Freakley and Valencia that has written most of the music.
You can practically hear the influences throughout the entire albums in some way, Slayer is everywhere in how the songs are constructed and with how the heavy riffing supports and carries the verses and slowed down in order to get a thrashing groove in time for the chorus, if the vocals had been better it would have been just to close, although it is then Watch Them Die is at their best.
Mix those influences with the death metal you got from the band Death (Chuck Shuldiner R.I.P.) and the last two albums from Pantera you come pretty close on how this one sounds.

The more "normal" vocals that comes from, well I cant really tell who is singing what and where, but they are two that sings anyway, cant always tell them apart if I should be honest, hard to get a significant and personal voice when growling. So anyhow, the more normal vocals are of the aggressive style perhaps close to an pissed of Phil Anselmo like on Pantera's The Great Southern Trendkill (1996), while the growls are not that extreme and should fit in somewhere alongside Johan Liiva (ex-Arch Enemy).

That the music is dark and brutal comes apparent already with the cover artwork done by Travis Smith that also has done covers for bands like: Nevermore, Iced Earth, Demons & Wizards and Axenstar among many others. A figure pointing a gun at people lying on the ground, dark and suggestive and if you missed that you get immediately aware of that as the first track Torn Pages grinds you down.
Watch Them Die pretty much keeps up the pace all the way until the end with their grinding and riffing and it is only with the final track Resurrection the music gets more varied and gets more emotional then the rest.

It took me a couple of listening but then the music really started to come out of the album, some of the guitar harmonies are really tastefully done and that goes for some of the guitar solos as well.
But the guitar harmonies and solos that are done in true thrash manor suffers greatly due to the poor production that makes it all sound thin and noisy and makes it hard to hear the melodic sense through what it feels like a wall of noise. The producing is done by the band and Dan Rathbun and if the soundpicture could have been clearer with a thicker and heavier sound the number of chalices would have been higher, because this really takes away some of the pleasure from the music.

So is it really worth to spend your money on? Not so sure about that but it got something that gets me going. It is tough, hard and mean balancing between thrash and death and it feels almost evil but most of all it feels sincere and genuine and that counts high, the anger feels justified and these guys are apparently pissed at something and they make you feel that they have the right to be.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
3	5	5

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Thomas