Watchtower is the Austin band that pioneered technical thrash. Formed in May 1982, it put odd time signatures, Rush-style bass lines and thrash speed on one record, Energetic Disassembly, released on the band’s own label in 1985. AllMusic called it “the recording most responsible for the development of the progressive metal genre.” The band is still active, with McMaster back on vocals.
The Short Version
- Formed in Austin in May 1982: Jason McMaster, Billy White, Doug Keyser and Rick Colaluca.
- Start with Energetic Disassembly (1985), then Control and Resistance (1989).
- Rotting Corpse shared an Austin bill with them in 1986 and a Fort Worth bill in 2025.
Who Is Watchtower?
Watchtower is a four-piece from Austin, Texas, and one of the three bands credited with starting technical thrash metal. Wikipedia names it alongside Canada’s Voivod and Switzerland’s Coroner. Wikipedia also calls Energetic Disassembly “the first technical thrash metal album.”
The band’s own site names Dream Theater and Death among the bands it influenced. Wikipedia adds that Death’s Chuck Schuldiner cited Energetic Disassembly as an influence on the band’s turn toward technical death metal on Human (1991).
Watchtower also sits at the center of the Texas story. Bazillion Points founder Ian Christe, writing about Rotting Corpse on the band’s coverage page, describes a tight statewide clan of 1980s Texas metal that ran from Corpus Christi’s Devastation to Austin’s Watchtower.
How Watchtower Formed in Austin
Jason McMaster came first. His official biography says he was born in Corpus Christi in 1965, moved to Austin in 1980 “to play music,” and started a covers band called Fallen Angel in 1981. He joined Watchtower in 1982.
Guitarist Billy White designed the band’s first logo lettering at about 17, according to the band’s site. Its first shirt, from 1983, carried a mission statement: “We are forming an alliance to overthrow and annihilate the presence of songs that lack integrity and music produced for the sole purpose of material reward.”
The early sets were mostly borrowed. Bassist Doug Keyser told The Progressive Subway in 2024 that the band “had a blast playing local parties,” mixing early originals with covers of Rush, Iron Maiden and other British metal. You can hear both all over the first record.
The first Watchtower song on vinyl came out of Texas hardcore, not metal. “Meltdown” closed Cottage Cheese from the Lips of Death, a 1983 Texas hardcore compilation with D.R.I., Austin’s Big Boys and other Texas punk bands. Austin’s punk and metal crowds shared rooms in those years, and the Ritz on Sixth Street was one of them.
The Ritz (now Comedy Mothership) Now a comedy club
The 1980s music club is gone; the website link below is for the current tenant. Opened as a movie house in 1929, it became Austin’s punk club in 1982 with a Black Flag bill. Keyser counts mid-1980s Ritz shows among his best memories, and Rotting Corpse played it with Militia. It was an Alamo Drafthouse from 2007 to 2021 and reopened as Joe Rogan’s Comedy Mothership in 2023.
Flyer: Rotting Corpse archive (no photo of the 1980s club was available)
Energetic Disassembly: The First Technical Thrash Album
McMaster, White, Keyser and Colaluca made Energetic Disassembly in Austin. McMaster told The Progressive Subway he was “in the studio (Cedar Creek, South Austin, TX) finishing up things in Nov. of 1984.”
Two songs were older. “Meltdown” and “Tyrants in Distress” had been cut first at a different studio, engineered by Kerry Krafton. McMaster said the band mailed that cassette “all over the place.” Our piece on 1980s tape trading explains how that network worked.
The band produced it and pressed it on Zombo Records, its own label: eight songs, from “Violent Change” to “Meltdown.” Institute of Art gave it a first CD release in 1993, and a remaster followed in 2025.
What made it different was structure, not just speed. The Progressive Subway’s 2024 retrospective describes “rampant time signature changes, driving bass” and “feverish, spidery riffs in several time signatures.” It calls Colaluca’s playing “the fastest and most precise drum performance ever at that point in time.”
Start with “Tyrants in Distress,” one of the first two songs recorded and first on The Progressive Subway’s list of highlights. Then play the title track and “Social Fears.”
Was Watchtower the First Progressive Metal Band?
The Progressive Subway raised “a friendly rivalry between you and Fates Warning over having the ‘first’ ever prog metal album” with McMaster in 2024. His answer: the album is listed as a January 1985 release because “that is when our distributors had received the product.”
Sonic Perspectives argues from the recordings. Its reviewer notes that Watchtower’s original versions of these songs, which resurfaced on Demonstrations in Chaos (2002), “predate Queensrÿche’s first ‘proper’ prog-metal album The Warning by a good year, and Fates Warning’s first experimentations with the style on The Spectre Within by two.” It calls Watchtower “the first progressive metal band,” and Austin “the birthplace of the genre.” On the dates, that holds up.
Watchtower
Austin, formed 1982. Start with Energetic Disassembly (1985), then Control and Resistance (1989).
Watchtower Band Members and Lineup Changes
The record got Watchtower on big tours fast. Wikipedia lists dates with Slayer, Anthrax, Celtic Frost and Voivod. McMaster remembers getting “the call for the opening slots for a lot of the up and coming groundbreaking bands.”
Then the lineup turned over. Billy White left in the fall of 1986. His replacement was Ron Jarzombek, a guitarist from San Antonio. Reviewing his later project Blotted Science, Decibel wrote that Jarzombek “should be a friggin’ legend by now.”
McMaster left in 1988 to front Dangerous Toys, the Austin hard rock band that signed to CBS. His biography adds a DFW footnote: in 1986 Vinnie Paul called him twice in one month to audition for Pantera, and he turned it down both times. Our piece on Pantera’s glam years covers the band he nearly joined.
Dangerous Toys
McMaster’s Austin hard rock band, formed in 1987. Start with the gold-certified debut Dangerous Toys (Columbia, 1989); Bandcamp has Demolition (2025), unreleased early recordings.
His first replacement was another Austin singer. Mike Soliz came over from Militia and sang on Watchtower’s track for a 1989 Noise Records compilation, according to the band’s site. New Jersey singer Alan Tecchio took over in 1989.
That lineup made Control and Resistance at Sky Trak Studio in Berlin. Noise released it on November 6, 1989. Guitar World wrote that Jarzombek pulls “tricks on his guitar that will leave you more than sufficiently breathless.”
Half the songs came from the first lineup. Wikipedia credits “Instruments of Random Murder,” “The Eldritch,” “The Fall of Reason” and the title track to Keyser and Billy White. Jarzombek and Keyser wrote the other four.
The critics heard the jump. AllMusic’s Robert Taylor, as summarized on Wikipedia, heard “the most extreme elements” of Rush, Queensrÿche, Metallica and Yngwie Malmsteen, with Allan Holdsworth’s jazz playing behind Jarzombek’s leads. Guitar World later put it on its list of the top ten shred albums of the 1980s. Wikipedia calls it a major influence on the technical death metal scene then taking shape.
Start with “The Fall of Reason,” the eight-minute centerpiece, then “Mayday in Kiev.” To hear two of these songs with McMaster singing, the 2025 two-CD remaster of Energetic Disassembly adds 1987 demos of “Instruments of Random Murder” and “The Eldritch.”
A European tour opening for Coroner ended in the spring of 1990, and Tecchio left. The band never found a permanent singer and broke up in 1993.
Watchtower and Rotting Corpse on the Same Bill
In 1986 Rotting Corpse drove down for a 4th of July Brain Bash with Watchtower at the Continental Club on South Congress. It’s one of two out-of-town shows that drummer Dave Gryder singles out on the band’s venues page.
“We got a lot of positive feedback plus the other bands were super cool to us. Austin and San Antonio were always great to us!”
That’s Gryder. The other gig he names was the Ritz with Militia, Mike Soliz’s band before Watchtower.
On September 20, 2025, Rotting Corpse played The Rail in Fort Worth on a five-band bill with Watchtower, according to the band’s timeline. That December it went back to the Continental Club. The full story is on the history page.
The Continental Club Open
The room where Watchtower and Rotting Corpse played the 1986 Brain Bash. It still runs a full calendar, and Rotting Corpse came back in December 2025.
Photo: Christy Harris via Google
Spastic Ink, Reunions and Concepts of Math
After 1993 Jarzombek formed the instrumental band Spastic Ink, and McMaster kept Dangerous Toys going.
Spastic Ink
Jarzombek’s instrumental band, the closest thing to Watchtower without vocals. Start with Ink Complete (1997).
McMaster, Jarzombek, Keyser and Colaluca reunited in 1999. In 2000 it played Bang Your Head!!! in Germany and opened for Dream Theater in Houston and Dallas. Demonstrations in Chaos (2002) collected early recordings and 1987 demos.
Tecchio returned for the 2010 single “The Size of Matter” and left again that May. He came back for three 2015 singles, gathered with a new song on Concepts of Math: Book One (Prosthetic, 2016). Michael Toland of the Austin Chronicle wrote that Jarzombek and Keyser “haven’t lost a step.”
The third album, Mathematics, is still unfinished. In 2020 Colaluca said “there are a couple of sticking points that we just can’t seem to get past.” He added that much of it was recorded “to some degree.”
McMaster rejoined in 2023. That October the band played Keep It True Rising in Würzburg, Germany. The first U.S. show back was at Fitzgerald’s in San Antonio. Then came Austin, at Come and Take It Live, where local fans had waited nearly twenty years to see the band again. Sonic Perspectives heard “zero evidence of backing tracks,” and the set closed with a cover of Rush’s “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.” Hell’s Heroes in Houston came that March.
Come and Take It Live Open
The East Riverside room that books much of the touring metal in Austin, and where Watchtower played its homecoming, reviewed in January 2024. Its fall calendar is heavy on thrash and death metal.
Photo: AC Davis via Google
Where to Hear It Live
As of September 2026, Watchtower has no announced shows. Its official site and Songkick page are the places to watch. These related dates are confirmed on venue calendars:
- Saturday, September 26, 2026: Dangerous Toys, with Jason McMaster, at The Backyard, 511 S. 8th St., Waco. Venue calendar.
- Tuesday, November 3, 2026: Denver thrashers Havok and three support bands at Come and Take It Live, Austin. Tickets.
- Tuesday, November 17, 2026: Bay Area thrash band Forbidden and fellow Bay Area veterans Heathen at Come and Take It Live, Austin. Tickets.
- Wednesday, November 18, 2026: The same Forbidden tour at Trees in Deep Ellum, Dallas. Venue calendar.
- March 18 to 20, 2027: Hell’s Heroes IX at White Oak Music Hall, Houston, where Watchtower played in 2024. Overkill co-headlines with an old-school set. Venue calendar.
For Rotting Corpse dates, check the shows page. New shows are announced on Instagram first.
Start with “Evil Slaughter” (1986)
It’s from the first demo, cut at Pantego Sound in the spring of 1986, the same year the band played the Brain Bash with Watchtower; the words are on the lyrics page.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Watchtower (band)
- Wikipedia: Energetic Disassembly
- Wikipedia: Control and Resistance
- Watchtower: official site
- Jason McMaster: Bio
- The Progressive Subway: Interview: Watchtower (2024)
- The Progressive Subway: Lost in Time: Watchtower, Energetic Disassembly
- Austin Chronicle: Texas Platters: Watchtower, Concepts of Math: Book One
- Sonic Perspectives: Watchtower live review, January 2024
- Wikipedia: Ritz (Austin, Texas)
- Texas Punk Treasure Chest: Cottage Cheese from the Lips of Death
- Wikipedia: Dangerous Toys
- Voices from the Darkside: Watchtower, Energetic Disassembly (2025 reissue review)
- Wikipedia: Ron Jarzombek
- Metal Odyssey: Forbidden announces Chaos By Design US Tour 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the members of Watchtower?
The current Watchtower lineup is singer Jason McMaster, guitarist Ron Jarzombek, bassist Doug Keyser and drummer Rick Colaluca. Founding guitarist Billy White played on Energetic Disassembly and left in 1986. Mike Soliz sang with the band from 1988 to 1989, and Alan Tecchio sang on Control and Resistance (1989) and the 2016 EP Concepts of Math: Book One.
What albums has Watchtower released?
Watchtower has made two studio albums: Energetic Disassembly (1985, on the band’s own Zombo Records) and Control and Resistance (Noise Records, November 6, 1989). There is also the compilation Demonstrations in Chaos (2002) and the EP Concepts of Math: Book One (Prosthetic Records, 2016). A third album, Mathematics, has never been finished.
Is Energetic Disassembly the first technical thrash album?
It is widely credited that way. Wikipedia describes it as recognized as the first technical thrash metal album, and AllMusic called it the recording most responsible for the development of the progressive metal genre. McMaster recalls finishing work at Cedar Creek in South Austin in November 1984, and the band released it on its own label in 1985.
Is Watchtower still together?
Yes. Jason McMaster rejoined in 2023, and the band has played Keep It True Rising in Germany, Hell’s Heroes in Houston and Come and Take It Live in Austin since then. McMaster said in June 2025 that new music was in the works. As of September 2026 the band has no announced shows.
Did Watchtower play with Rotting Corpse?
Yes. Rotting Corpse played a 4th of July Brain Bash with Watchtower at the Continental Club in Austin in 1986, and the two bands shared a bill at The Rail in Fort Worth in September 2025.
