Warning are an English doom metal band formed in Harlow, Essex, in 1994 by vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Patrick Walker. Their music is built around slow, monumental guitar passages, sparse arrangements and Walker’s deeply expressive clean vocals, using doom metal to explore love, separation, regret and emotional vulnerability with unusual directness.
After introducing themselves through the demos Revelation Looms and Blessed by the Sabbath, Warning released their debut album, The Strength to Dream, in 1999. The record established their traditional doom metal foundation through lengthy compositions, heavy melodic riffs and an atmosphere of isolation and spiritual exhaustion.
Following an initial period of inactivity, the band returned with Watching from a Distance in 2006. Consisting of five extended songs, the album replaced much of doom metal’s fantasy and occult imagery with intensely personal writing about longing, failed relationships and emotional distance. Songs including Footprints, Bridges and Faces paired crushing guitar work with performances that often sounded painfully exposed rather than conventionally aggressive.
Although Warning became inactive shortly after the album’s release, Watching from a Distance gradually developed an exceptional cult reputation and came to be regarded as one of the defining doom metal records of the twenty-first century. Walker subsequently founded 40 Watt Sun, continuing his exploration of slow, emotionally direct songwriting through a quieter and increasingly atmospheric form.
Warning reunited in 2017 to perform Watching from a Distance in full at Roadburn Festival, followed by further European and North American concerts. The performance was later issued as Watching from a Distance – Live at Roadburn in 2021.
The band entered another chapter in 2025, signing with Relapse Records and beginning work on its first new studio material in two decades. Rituals of Shame was released in June 2026. Written during an intensive three-month period and recorded inside a converted nineteenth-century church in Southport, the album revisits Warning’s characteristic themes of guilt, shame, obsession, personal failure, longing, separation and love.
Rather than attempting to recreate Watching from a Distance, Rituals of Shame presents an older and more reflective version of the band’s emotional doom metal. Its five extended compositions combine enormous guitar weight with restrained arrangements, carefully developed melodies and Walker’s unmistakably vulnerable delivery.
The current lineup consists of Patrick Walker on vocals and guitar, Wayne Taylor on guitar, Marcus Hatfield on bass and Andrew Prestidge on drums. Warning’s small but highly influential catalogue demonstrates that heaviness can come not only from volume and distortion, but from emotional clarity and the willingness to leave almost nothing concealed.
