Liner Notes to HBO's Watchmen Soundtrack Offers Additional Backstory to Series' Timeline

HBO's Watchmen occupies something of an interesting space within the alternative history presented by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' original comic book series of the same name. The Damon Lindelof-created television series exists in that same world, just three decades later. It's a significant gap of time, one that the show itself connects with some pretty broad strokes each episode but there are finer, more specific details, events, and information that happened "off camera", so to speak, during those years that have major impact on its version of 2019. Providing those details thus far have been the in-universe supplementary site Peteypedia and now, the first Watchmen soundtrack vinyl from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is helping as well. The vinyl release's liner notes also provide interesting historical and cultural context for the world of Watchmen.

According to Polygon, the first volume of the soundtrack is presented as the reissue of a controversial, in-universe album named The Book of Rorschach from a band called Sons of a Pale Horse -- so-named for the canonical band Pale Horse from the Watchmen comic. The album is being "reissued" for its 15th anniversary with the liner notes taking the form of an essay reflecting on the band, its influences, and the way the Dimensional Incursion of Event, D.I.E. for short (meaning the massive squid attack) forever altered music, culture, and, well, everything.

While the essay largely focuses on the fictional band and its history -- the essay picks up describing the childhood of one of the band's members whose father was part of a Doctor Manhattan-centric cult and was devastated when the blue being left for Mars and how the young man found solace in music when life got difficult -- there are some interesting revelations. It turns out that some familiar bands in our world exist in the Watchmen universe. Jane's Addiction is one. A group called The Nine Inch Nails is another, a play on Reznor and Ross's real-life project Nine Inch Nails.

The essay also reveals the album ended up becoming beloved by fringe fanatics, those who romanticized Rorschach as a cult hero and pretty much. According to the notes, this wasn't the intention of the band at all. It's explained that there was one and only concert in support of the album, one in which the crowd consisted mainly of "dude bros in Rorschach masks looking to mosh each other bloody," prompting the band to walk off the stage, never to come back.

While the liner notes to the album don't appear to have any actual plot-related connections to the Watchmen series, it does help give a bit of deeper understanding about just how complex the fascination with Rorschach is in Watchmen, particularly by those looking to spread their own toxic mix of racism and violence. On Watchmen, that is presented by the Seventh Kavalry, but the idea that a record was co-opted by people who may have similar sentiments shows just how deep some of that hatred is in the universe's culture -- and offers fans a lot more to think about as the series unfolds.

Watchmen: Volume 1 Music From the HBO Series is available now. Watchmen airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.

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