Warning - “Watching From a Distance” Review
Warning. Watching From a Distance. 2006. 4 stars.
After reading some glowing reviews online, I came across Warning, an influential doom metal band from Harlow, UK. Watching From a Distance has been hailed as not only their greatest opus, but one of the landmark metal albums of this decade. Warning’s music is monolithic, with powerful, sludgy riffs droning across mid tempo drum beats and pained, depressive vocals courtesy of the bellowing Patrick Walker. His efforts on this are surprisingly beautiful , as his plaintive baritone agonizes over lost love and unconquerable separations, likening himself to a wounded soldier trying to keep his strength across impossible terrain. Love is a battlefield and Walker expresses this with his every tension filled word.
The slow, thundering musicianship behind Walker is also deeply melancholic, as the distorted guitars reverberate with crushing intensity, providing a thick mist for the band to loose themselves in. The grooves are hypnotic and dense, creating a massive and heavy backdrop for the stunning clarity of Walker’s lyrics. For its lovelorn narratives and massive dynamics, Watching From a Distance is an impassioned metal record that deviates from the fast tempos and shrieking vocals associated with metal to pursue a more introspective journey. While Warning never stray far from the dark precipices they set themselves in, forever trudging in their slow and spacey rhythms, Walker’s convincing delivery, and the band’s conviction to atmosphere, makes them leading statesmen for modern doom metal.
“Faces” from a 2007 performance in London
May 13th, 2008 at 9:31 am
[…] the throbbing bass lines, martial drumming and Gothic vocals place The Gault among doom metal peers Warning and the more experimental work of Earth and Sunn O))), their cacophonous guitar work also follows a […]
June 14th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
best doom album ever PERIOD