Five songs.
How can five songs fill your life so completely, so absolutely?
How can forty-five minutes stretch timelessly across the entire spectrum of your life’s smallest and greatest moments?
Twenty years.
A long, long time.
And it took hearing Patrick Walker’s voice again —and witnessing the monumental return of WARNING through their unexpected new release this year— for me to truly understand it, to fully realize it, to genuinely feel it: twenty whole years.
As the first notes of “Rituals Of Shame” rang out, it was as if a film reel had begun turning somewhere deep inside my mind, retracing my life from the moment I first discovered WARNING back at the dawn of the new millennium, when my twenty-three-year-old self became utterly enchanted by “The Strength To Dream”. Once again, I was consumed by that indelible feeling of near-surreal detachment from the tangible, everyday world, and by that transcendental passage into an entirely personal, isolated universe of my own. The doom metal of WARNING —hypnotic, solemn, inwardly mystical— became a gateway to journeys through the unseen dimensions of my very existence, every emotion a different passage into myself.
Before that, I remember, there had been the ground-breaking debut of WHILE HEAVEN WEPT, “Sorrow Of The Angels”. PAGAN ALTAR had already released their mythical “Volume I”, SOLSTICE had taken their first steps, COUNT RAVEN had already been firmly established, and I was listening to CATHEDRAL, SAINT VITUS, PENANCE, and TROUBLE, trying not to confine myself solely to the epic Scandinavian sound and my beloved CANDLEMASS, MEMENTO MORI, and MEMORY GARDEN, nor to their great counterparts across the Atlantic, SOLITUDE AETURNUS.
It would not be long before the arrival of REVEREND BIZARRE either, and throughout the 00s an entire movement emerged that would breathe new life into doom metal, driven above all by the passion and conviction of the underground metal community itself.
What a time that was!
And with “Rituals Of Shame”, I was immediately taken back there — back when the sound of WARNING felt utterly unique and unprecedented. And in truth, it still does, no matter how familiar that singular style may have since become.
Well, I feel that we should truly give praise to WARNING for all they have done and everything they mean to us, the fans, doomsters or not, and their upcoming, third album gives us a golden chance to do so! For decades, this legendary entity has stood as a towering landmark, a quiet but monumental cornerstone of doom metal. Their influence does not stem from grandiosity or theatrical pretense, but from a humble, hushed, and completely unpretentious place. WARNING fundamentally redefined the very concept of doom, morphing the genre – mastermind Patrick Walker brought absolute emotional vulnerability to the forefront, baring his soul to sing of separation, isolation, self-doubt, and love, with such elegantly expressed musical heaviness that has never been heard before.
“Watching From A Distance” is an absolute masterpiece. That record, with the sheer majesty of its simple, agonizingly slow, and emotionally pregnant guitar riffs, paired with Walker’s despair-drenched vocal delivery, single-handedly birthed a new doom sound. Now, two decades later, “Rituals Of Shame” arrives not merely as a follow-up, but as the true spiritual and creative successor to that sacred blueprint. Yet, this is not merely a nostalgic return, but a continuation — the sound of unfinished grief resuming its sentence after years of silence. The album breathes like memory does: unevenly, painfully, honestly.
To experience “Rituals Of Shame” is to enter a profound mystagogia. The album subjects the listener to an overwhelming, shattering wave of emotion, utilizing the inherent crushing weight of doom metal expression not to bury us, but to guide us toward a strange, liberating release through a cathartic, beautiful melancholy. This isn’t just music to listen to; it is a deeply personal journey of self-fulfillment and survival. The heavy, down-tuned guitars do something remarkable here — they seem to identify with our own natural cycles, expressing the sorrowful heartbeat, the mourning, the blackness that settles quietly inside us. Indeed, what a stellar guitar duet do Patrick Walker and Wayne Taylor make!
And how Marcus Hatfield (bass) and Andrew Prestidge (drums) gloriously contribute to the compositions! It’s as if their rhythmic foundation acts as the essential anchor we desperately need to overcome our deepest disappointment and despair. They provide the steady hand that holds us up, urging us to take another step, and another, to move forward.
To remain standing.
That has always been the miracle of WARNING.
Their music understands hopelessness intimately, yet never entirely surrenders to it.
And if that is finally possible, it’s through Patrick Walker‘s vocals. His performance is a heartbreaking threnody that, for anyone who truly understands the devastating nature of human grief, transmutes raw pain into an uplifting, transcendent redemption. It remains the most chillingly, breathtakingly beautiful thing the metal scene has had to offer in decades.
While the entire five-song journey flows as an unbroken piece of art, the two leading tracks highlight the immense emotional spectrum of the record. The self-titled opener, “Rituals Of Shame”, is a 13-minutes long, devastating, claustrophobic exploration of human frailty. Walker sings with agonizing clarity:
“With unsparing clear images running through the lantern of the soul,
I must watch in petrified silence, and I can’t close my eyes to it.”
The song builds into a crushing wall of sound as he addresses an all-consuming internal crisis, crying out:
“And here, in the central hour of my life,
all experience bursts in on me,
pulling me into the shame of the most base rituals of humiliation.”
“Stations” –the album’s first single– offers a different kind of self-isolation. There is something profoundly human in the line that concludes the song:
“Whatever you leave me, you leave me alive.”
Few bands can transform emotional ruin into something so strangely consoling. Walker’s voice remains one of the most painfully beautiful instruments doom metal has ever produced — a lamentation that, for those who truly understand pain, transforms itself into something almost redemptive. There have been heavier vocalists in metal history. There have been more technically accomplished singers. But few voices have ever carried this degree of exposed humanity.
And that humanity permeates the entire album.
“Night Comes Down” that follows, is the album’s second single, and having already listened to more than half of the record, I dared to think that impossible as it may seem, THIS would be EVEN BETTER than “Watching From A Distance” – there, I said it! And I am totally certain that as the album grows, there are going to be more and more to admit that “Rituals Of Shame” stands, at least, at the same height as its predecessor.
Before the grand finale, comes “Landing Lights”, a song that reaches toward love like a dying signal flare in endless distance. Pulsing. Almost failing to exist. Almost; but it’s STILL there! My favorite song of the album, bright in its own unique way. Risking a heretical comment, I must confess that it felt like my dearest MADRUGADA were turned to doom metal!
“It’s in the hopeless darkness you hold me from.
Because I never gave that light away;
I hold it to my heart;
and if I ever carried you home,
you were always in my arms.”
The album closes wtih “Teacher”, perhaps one of the most heartbreaking songs Walker has ever written, its repeated verse “Time will turn to me” sounding like a fragile prayer mantra. A truly BRILLIANT composition, a GREAT song!
Across the album, the themes remain those that have always haunted his work: “guilt, shame, personal failure, obsession, longing and separation, but, most of all… love.” Yet what changes here is perspective. “Watching From a Distance” felt consumed by emotional devastation in real time. “Rituals Of Shame” feels like looking directly into the scars left behind.
The setting of the album’s creation somehow feels inseparable from the music itself. Walker working on the material all day, seven days a week, over three months, his immersion in the project becoming a full-time pursuit; the retreating to a remote house on a hill outside Florence to finish the lyrics; the recording taking place in a 140-year-old former church in Southport — these details are not romantic trivia.
You can hear their impact on the album, the creative urge, the strive for perfection, the haunting aura, everything is palpable. As a result, “Rituals Of Shame” carries the immense emotional weight that defines doom metal, but also the liberation hidden within the cathartic sadness. It draws the listener into a deeply personal journey toward self-recognition, perhaps even self-fulfillment.
Not despite the pain, but through it.
What makes WARNING such a great band is that they perfectly express something fundamental about doom metal: slowness is not simply a tempo, but a psychological state. And thus, they sound painfully, terrifyingly, and sincerely human.
“Rituals Of Shame” was recorded at The Arch Studio by Tom Dring and Chris Fullard (IDLES, SUNN O))), ULVER) who also handled mixing. It was mastered by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering.
The wonderful artwork was made by Tekla Vály.
“Rituals Of Shame” will be released on June 4th on CD, LP and MC on June 19th by Relapse Records.
Check the discussion about the album in our forum pages.
You can pre-order the CD, LP, and MC here.
