WARNING

They said it would never happen, but love always finds a way. Released 20 years ago, WARNING's second album "Watching from a Distance" has become one of the most revered and cherished doom metal albums of all time. A five-song, 50-minute emotional blowout, it showcased the very distinct and singular way that frontman Patrick Walker goes about his business, with his tremulous but powerful clean vocals placed at the center of things, and songs that unfold at a glacial pace. Raw and vulnerable and yet elegant and strong, Walker's songs took doom somewhere completely new, but until now, a follow-up seemed extremely unlikely. Recent live reunions made all the difference, however, and now Walker is back to break our hearts all over again.

Despite spending the last decade fronting 40 WATT SUN, Walker has clearly never lost the ability to get heavy. Once again, a doom metal album that ignores the usual rules, "Rituals of Shame" is a wholesale return to the crestfallen magic of "Watching from a Distance", with five new songs that combine Walker's tearstained confessionals with rich, warm guitar tones that resound with funereal intent. Beautifully paced and executed with rare restraint, every one of them delivers a jaw-juddering, slow-motion jab to the chin, in part due to the emotionally brutal lyrics that seem to flow out of Walker's mind, uncensored and devastating. "Tonight, there's nothing that can reach me in the world outside / It's just another vast, aching hunger; an emptiness of another kind…" he sings during "Stations", and it is that sense of sadness, of grief, loss and detachment, that permeates every inch of "Rituals of Shame". It is never completely clear what is being sung about, but the veracity of it all is never up for debate. Walker bares his soul because to do otherwise would be a terrible compromise.

Although "Rituals of Shame" is anything but conventional, it does still tally with doom metal's in-built fixation on existential tumult and the perennial challenge of self-validation. On the coruscating crawl of "Night Comes Down" in particular, WARNING's snail's-pace maneuvers and chordal stoicism reach a peak of efficacy. As Walker writhes in emotional torment, "pregnant with pain", guitars form a protective cocoon of distortion around him, each riff adding depth to the disorienting squall. Again, no one else makes music like this, and any joy derived from this band's return is equaled by the sobering notion that Walker is still experiencing such extremes of emotion two decades down the line. That he gets to channel all that angst into such gorgeous and exhilarating music is the more obvious upside to the situation.

On a more practical level, "Rituals of Shame" might be a shade or two less captivating than "Watching from a Distance" on first listen, but if the trajectory of that album is any indication, this new one will be capturing hearts, one at a time, for the next 20 years or more.