Warning release their new full length player, two decades after their massively Watching From A Distance debut. Is Rituals Of Shame worth the wait?

EMOTIONALLY CHARGED

Few albums have stayed with me the way Watching from a Distance has. Twenty years after its release, I still consider it one of the most emotionally charged albums in the history of doom metal. Over the time i kept returning to it, discovering new shades of pain, longing and vulnerability with every listen. Like many others, I followed Patrick Walker’s work through 40 Watt Sun. Having had the chance to witness an acoustic performance, and briefly meet him, I was left with the same impression his music had always given me: absolute sincerity.

When Rituals of Shame was announced, the obvious focus was the twenty-year gap separating it from Watching from a Distance. Yet after spending time with the album, that gap somehow feels much smaller. More than a comeback record, Rituals of Shame feels like a continuation. The emotional thread connecting the two albums was never broken.

RITUALS OF SHAME

The title track immediately establishes that connection. Rituals of Shame feels almost like a bridge between the two records. Musically, the atmosphere remains faithful to the sound that made Warning so unique, while lyrically the song dives into the suffocating reality of trauma, emotional detachment and isolation. There is a constant contrast between the chaos unfolding internally and the face presented to the outside world.

At its heart, however, the song is a desperate plea for connection, capturing the agonising distance between a suffering individual and the person trying to love them through the darkness.

STATIONS

Stations follows with a more introspective mood. If the opening track is consumed by emotional turmoil, Stations feels like a moment of reflection in the lonely white. The song explores existential loneliness and the exhaustion that comes from maintaining a version of yourself that no longer feels authentic. There is a cinematic quality to its imagery, as if the narrator is travelling through an empty landscape while trying to leave behind old disguises and find something more genuine. The spacious arrangement perfectly complements that sense of distance and contemplation.

Rituals Of Shame reaches one of its darkest points with Night Comes Down. Here, music and lyrics become inseparable. The song unfolds like a funeral march, carrying a slow sense of inevitability from beginning to end. Subtle tolling sounds in the background reinforce the feeling of something being laid to rest. The darkness described in the lyrics is overwhelming, not as a sudden catastrophe but as a force that gradually settles over the individual, burying them piece by piece. The impression is that of someone mourning not simply a lost relationship, but the hope of ever loving normally the object of their desire. It is one of the album’s most haunting moments.

LANDING LIGHTS

After that emotional weight, Landing Lights offers a different perspective. Built around distance and enduring affection, the song explores the painful reality that some people remain part of us long after they are gone. The image of the landing lights becomes a beautiful metaphor for guidance and safety, a small but constant source of light visible
through darkness. There is warmth beneath the melancholy here, creating one of the album’s most intimate moments. Love remains present despite separation, refusing to disappear completely.

Teacher closes the album; perhaps its most devastating track. Many of the themes explored throughout Rituals of Shame converge here: shame, longing, devotion, inadequacy and dependency. One possible interpretation is that the titular teacher is not a mentor at all, but the album’s enduring object of love. Viewed through that lens, the song
becomes even more powerful. The person being addressed is elevated almost to a sacred status, their presence shaping the narrator’s emotional world so completely that love itself becomes a form of instruction. The track closes not with resolution but with surrender, exposing a simple and terrifying truth beneath all the album’s abstract imagery: the fear of being alone.

A COMPANION

Musically speaking, Rituals of Shame often feels like a companion piece to Watching From A Distance. At times the two records almost resemble a single work separated by twenty years. The sound remains remarkably faithful to what Warning achieved in 2006. The slow-burning melodies, mournful guitars and emotional weight carried by every note are still present. Patrick Walker has spoken about influences such as Marillion, June Tabor and Revelation’s John Brenner, and traces of those inspirations can certainly be found here, but the album remains unmistakably Warning from beginning to end.

Chris Fullard’s production deserves praise for preserving the organic nature of the material. Recorded at The Arch Studio, a 140-year-old former church in Southport, the album possesses a spacious and natural sound that allows every melody and lyric to breathe. Nothing feels rushed or overcrowded.

EVOCATIVE ART

Tekla Vály’s cover art is equally worthy of attention. More than a simple cover image, it acts almost as a visual introduction to the album’s emotional content. The image of the veiled lovers recalls both Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and René Magritte’s The Lovers. The connection to Magritte feels especially striking. Like the figures in that painting, the lovers appear close yet separated by an invisible barrier. The image speaks of the impossibility of complete intimacy, of never fully understanding another person and never being fully understood. It embodies frustration, isolation and the limits of emotional vulnerability.

At the same time, the artwork evokes the Victorian motif of the veiled virgin, a figure associated with purity, idealisation and unattainability. The loved one becomes almost sacred, admired from a distance and elevated beyond reach. That reading resonates strongly with songs such as Landing Lights and Teacher, where love often appears
inseparable from longing and emotional distance. Even the grey, fog-like background contributes to the feeling of suspension, placing the figures in the same emotional landscape inhabited by the music.

What makes Rituals of Shame so compelling is that it never feels trapped by nostalgia. Rather than attempting to recreate Watching from a Distance, it continues the emotional conversation that began there. The wounds are older, the perspective has changed, and the questions have become more complex, but the sincerity at the heart of Patrick Walker’s songwriting remains untouched.

Twenty years later, Warning do not return to reclaim a legacy; they return, as there is still a lot left to say.

During the making of Rituals of Shame, filmmaker Geert Braekers spent time with Warning, documenting much of the creative process. You can watch the short film below.

Warning: Official Website

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