While metal and heavy music both have gone through major changes and advancements over the decades, emotional nakedness only has a constant home when it comes to anger, frustration, and death. Bands and artists that aren’t afraid to tell you how they feel and how that tests their will aren’t plentiful enough, and for that, thankfully we have Warning.

Having disappeared after 2006’s “Watching From a Distance” and a 2010 EP, the band returns here with “Rituals of Shame,” a title that basically acts as a summary for this band’s and vocalist/guitarist Patrick Walker’s life work. In fact, a lot of this new 5-track, 45-minute record shines deeply from the 40 Watt Sun oeuvre with slower tracks and Walker’s voice drizzling over with lyrics centered on a particularly tough stretch of life. Pain, guilt, doubt, sorrow, and love and in abundance, and that ability to show that unabashedly should inspire others to do the same. Walker, joined by longtime members Wayne Taylor (guitar) and Marcus Hatfield (bass), as well as Andrew Prestidge (drums, also from 40 Watt Sun), never shies away from his wounds and presents them here in as transparent a manner as possible, with the band providing the proper black drapery. It’s moving and unforgettable.

The title track opens, a 12:49-long epic that is the longest track here, unleashing the band’s trademark sorrow with rich singing from Walker, who always finds a way to jab under your ribs into your heart. Leads sweep as the pace continues its gradual pathway, slithering as Walker calls, ” I must watch in petrified silence, and I can’t close my eyes to it,” the playing burning and smoking. Guitars lull you into spacious melodies, pure emotion chilling your guts, the final lines tracking into darkness, blurring into mystery. “Stations” has guitars churning and the singing coasting, Walker lamenting, ” Holding on, cradled to the bruise-black sky, swollen with the secrets of a living lie, pour me out like silver in a common world.” Easy to create that broken photo in your mind. Darkness laps as the singing glides, Walker leveling, “It’s just another vast, aching hunger; an emptiness of another kind.” The playing wrenches as the blood drips slowly, hanging in the air as doom waves lap, crushing as colors mar, sadness flowing like an everlasting tributary into oblivion.

“Night Comes Down” enters amid gushing guitars and energy sweltering, Walker wondering, “You learn to live with it, but how did ever I believe it so long as the whole and total expression of love?” Drums tease as the high hat grazes, folding in further melodies and faint light ripples, pummeling psyches, ashen leads dragging trails across the ground. “Landing Lights” is the shortest song at 6:28, drums spitting gravel, the singing clouding as Walker sings, “But I never gave that light away, I hold it to my heart, it’s always there, but how would you know, when I’ve been away so long?” That’s a crusher of a sequence. Guitars fire up and get muddier, the pace later numbing, dripping gently into a pool of glimmering doom. Closer “Teacher” gushes in, Walker taking reins and leveling with, “I will not be unafraid; time will turn to me.” The leads inject grays and blues, continuing to pull back the tempo as everything sinks into your bloodstream. The playing goes cold and teases fading before the guitars carve an icy pathway, the singing bursts anew, and the heat leaves lightly scorched flesh, Walker ending with, “But I can’t see beyond you, and I can’t count to the ways I love you.”

“Rituals of Shame” has as much Warning DNA as it has strains from 40 Watt Sun, and it makes for a gentler, darker, and even more emotionally vulnerable record that will take multiple visits to fully digest. Walker never has hidden his bloody heart nor his pain, and the band stretches out these confessions and devotions with a steady hand and a doom power that makes a home for dealing with your own woes. It’s great to have this band back, as many of us could use an outlet to unleash what’s been burdening us for so long.  

For more on the band, go here: https://www.warningband.com/

To buy the album, go here: https://www.relapse.com/pages/warning-rituals-of-shame

For more on the label, go here: https://www.relapse.com/