The Clockwork Quartet
are a Steampunk Filk group with a propensity for the macabre. Although the band's website is quiet, they maintain a presence on Facebook.
The band's music is dark, somewhat disturbing, and catchy, usually set in a pseudo-Victorian Crapsack World, which has been expanded on a bit more as of late with the site's webcomic.
The band provides examples of:
- Clockwork Creature: "The Doctor's Wife" has parts of her body being shut down by some unnamed malady while the Doctor has to keep replacing them with mechanical bits.
- Mad Doctor: Although he doesn't start out mad, the unnamed doctor in "The Doctor's Wife" will go to any lengths to keep his wife alive
- Murder Ballad: "The Watchmaker's Apprentice", about said apprentice trying to frame his boss for said murder.
- Revenge by Proxy: A variation occurs in "The Watchmaker's Apprentice". After being fired by the watchmaker, the eponymous apprentice breaks into his master's shop in the middle of the night; wanting a more satisfying revenge than burglary or vandalism, he spends the entire night constructing a very special pocket watch. A week later, a customer buys the watch — only for it to explode "at six on the dot," killing him instantly. As a result, the watchmaker is arrested for manslaughter, his business is left in ruins and his reputation obliterated. Meanwhile, the apprentice gleefully slinks off to the seaside, knowing that the whole plan has worked out like clockwork.
- Right on the Tick: "The Clockmaker's Apprentice" reveals that he has rigged the pocketwatch to explode, killing the owner at precisely 6:00.
- Sanity Slippage Song: The Doctor's Wife, a Steampunk song about a doctor, trying and failing to cure his wife's deadly illness, over the course of several months.
- Villain Protagonist: "The Watchmaker's Apprentice", who is trying to frame his boss for murder.
- Villain Song: "The Watchmaker's Apprentice" is from the POV of a disgruntled ex-employee framing his boss for murder. As the song progresses, he gradually gets more and more unhinged:I rigged up a watch to do more than just chime
And I didn't balk once at the depth of my crime
The most perfect invention, that still kept impeccable time
