For their first album in 20 years, UK’s beloved doom metal stalwarts don’t stray far from what fans expect – they take what works and refine it.
Release date: June 19, 2026 | Relapse Records | Instagram | Facebook | Bandcamp
There comes a time in the career of an unpaid music critic when one really has to sit down and think: ‘What were my formative influences? What got me into this big wide world of auditory art in the first place?‘ And sometimes, one finds that they can’t be objective about certain styles, sounds, or musical lineages; they become a part of your taste. In the case of little ol’ me, the first time I heard Black Sabbath got me off and running into a certain sound called doom metal, a genre that has twisted into all sorts of offshoots and fractals in the 50-odd years since its formative albums. The operatic yowling and crunchy riffing of Candlemass, the violin-swathed dirges of My Dying Bride, the tongue-in-cheek green haze of Sleep – all quality examples of what can be done by taking the slow, heavy blues of Sabbath and emphasizing different aspects of it. In the case of English quartet Warning, the accentuation is clear from the opening notes of any album of their nearly three-decade existence: bleak, soul-crushing hopelessness. Wahoo!
The acquisition of Warning‘s back catalogue by Relapse Records in 2025 and the announcement that the band would be recording a new album for the label was a pleasant surprise for those in the doomer know, myself included. It felt like long overdue validation for a group that, until now, had mostly been known by an underground cult audience – you know, the kind that checks an album out because it’s featured on lists called ‘The 13 Bleakest Rock and Metal Albums Ever‘ and ‘The 10 Most Heartbreaking Doom Metal Songs‘. That’s quite the vaunted reputation for any artist, let alone one that hasn’t been active or touring since 2009. Their last album, 2006’s Watching From a Distance, stands tall as an overwhelming, almost uncomfortably dour metal record. Prior to that, they only had one other album to their name, 1999’s The Strength to Dream, so that makes three albums over a span of nearly 30 years (frontman Patrick Walker has thankfully kept himself busy releasing quality material with the similarly sad folk rock outfit 40 Watt Sun). That’s a long time for expectations to build, so how does Warning sound after all these years?
From the jump, it’s clear that Warning have lost none of what made them special. The glacial pace of the music and the dejected warbling of Walker continue to make for a perfect combo, plunging the listener down into an endless sea of poor, unfortunate souls. The title track is exemplary, its alternating 6/4 and 4/4 time signature underpinning the lurching groove and despondent guitar riffs. Walker’s vocals, reminiscent of Ozzy Osbourne after a particularly inauspicious coke comedown, have not only retained their emotive power but have grown even stronger thanks to his experiences making more baroque styles of music in the years since Watching From a Distance. His repeated declarations of ‘I can’t close my eyes to it‘ are supremely haunting, effortlessly sending chills up the spine. About seven minutes through this gargantuan 13-minute long monster of a track – already long by most songs’ standards – the band takes it deeper, with the rhythm guitar stretching even lower and a melodic lead crying softly on top. Then, without (ahem) warning, the group switches up to a double-time groove, and Walker belts out some of his gloomiest lyrics to date:
‘Trembling and dumb between us
Is the test of a love that I can’t win.
You’re watching my eyes,
But you don’t know the flame I’m feeding,
Where all time exists.
It’s easier to separate the silence
From the face that I hide when I am it.‘
It’s an unforgettable image that Walker creates, as he has done many times throughout his career. What makes “Rituals of Shame” the ideal song to reintroduce Warning to the metal community is its storied, lived-in quality. While the band sounds pretty much how one would expect, there’s a greater sense of weathered, older people speaking to a wizened experience. The song’s final words – ‘It’s not in the darkness of certainty that I need you most/But in an ever-living, self-defeating horror/That follows me wherever I fall‘ – are as tragic as humanly possible, and in our modern of world of digital, inhuman creations and voices, it is intensely felt. The song wraps up with a reprise of the opening riff/rhythm, and then it collapses to the ground, succumbing to the misery. Man, did I mention how great it is to have Warning back?
First single “Stations” boasts a more straightforward structure and a tight nine-and-a-half minute runtime (hardy har), but this one has a stronger finish: new riffs are introduced for the purposes of jamming on, and drummer Aaron Prestidge (also of 40 Watt Sun) takes the opportunity to open up with some neatly-fitting tom and fill work. “Night Comes Down” has over a minute of build-up, a cavernous hole of slow guitar giving way to a lurching beat ready for any sinister cornfield after dark. Walker’s final vocal contribution to the song (which ends two minutes before the song’s sludgy harmonizing does) is just gorgeous and a clear reflection of his folk influences, lilting up on his last note in a way that manages to be both vulnerable and metal as all hell.
“Landing Lights” reads like a love letter to music itself, Walker grappling with both its ubiquity in his life – ‘Could I ever get beyond you/And where else would I have to go/In the patches of my love?‘ – and its importance to him in connecting with other people – ‘You know the happiness we leave in our wake/I will shout the sound of your name into the sky/To lessen the space‘ – before surmising it has always and will always be with him, for better and worse – ‘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.‘ It’s a beautifully written piece that could realistically take on many contexts, but, in that of Warning‘s reunion, it feels apt to extrapolate that Walker is glad to be back in their grim graces.
“Teacher” closes out Rituals of Shame in showstopping fashion, with perhaps the most desolate guitar riff present on the album providing the ideal canvas for what could be Walker’s crowning achievement as both a writer and singer. His vocal command is on full display as he relays to the titular figure how he ‘will not be unafraid…How did I hold such little faith?‘ and laments how he ‘did not know how time will turn to me/Between each shameful hour that throws focus on our love/And a darkening dependency I’m not holding very much.‘ As he confesses to his confused, frightened state of mind, the band unexpectedly backs off into a threadbare half-time (would it be one-quarter-time at this point?) that serves as a false ending: Warning bust back in once more and give it the send-off this album deserves. Walker’s impassioned cries of ‘I wanted to learn/I wanted so much/I wanted to try‘ are devastating during this coda, and a kept-in guitar squeal brings the triumphantly morbid Rituals of Shame to an end.
What else can be said about the Mona Lisa, or The Shawshank Redemption, or this album? These are great works of art, and remind of us our own essential vitality. Discussing them critically is a mug’s game; something human is tapped into. I’ve been actively attempting to keep my reviews leaner, but listening to a new Warning album (and one as good as this) just invites an outpouring of feelings. Sorry to my editors *shrug emoji*.
