British doom metal band WARNING has released "Rituals Of Shame" via Relapse Records, a five-track follow-up to 2006's cult classic "Watching From A Distance" that arrives two decades after that album quietly reshaped the genre's emotional register.
Frontman Patrick Walker used the album's release to reflect on how "Watching From A Distance" built its reputation almost entirely without conventional promotion, growing into a touchstone record through fan word-of-mouth on an independent label with minimal push behind it. "Any reputation it has comes through word of mouth and an organic process of self-discovery... nothing can compete with that," Walker said, describing the slow-burn discovery process as central to the record's lasting mystique rather than incidental to it.
Walker also pushed back on the way "Watching From A Distance" has often been characterized in the years since, rejecting its frequent label as one of the most emotionally bleak records in the genre. "I never set out to make anything depressing. That's the last thing in the world I want to do," he said, suggesting the album's intensity was always more about emotional honesty than deliberate despair.
That honesty extends to Walker's own relationship with promotion and the press, which he has historically avoided almost entirely. "I hated doing them for years. It's why I never did them... I thought I've said everything I wanted to say on the record," he explained, marking the interviews tied to "Rituals Of Shame" as a rare departure from that long-standing reluctance.
The new album was recorded at Arch Studio in Southport, with Walker crediting visual artist Tekla Vàly's contributions to the project's presentation: "I think she's a genius. I'm very grateful to work with her." Across the interview, Walker detailed a songwriting process built around the same unhurried, industry-agnostic instincts that shaped "Watching From A Distance" two decades ago — an approach that, by his own account, has never been oriented around chasing trends or maintaining a conventional release schedule.
With "Rituals Of Shame" now available, WARNING's long-awaited return gives longtime fans of "Watching From A Distance" a first proper look at how Walker's songwriting has evolved across a 20-year gap defined as much by his absence from the road and the press as by the music itself.