The Bad Penny (beta)

Warning‘s Rituals of Shame is an album effectively 20 years in the making, if not necessarily literally. Frontman Patrick Walker has released plenty of material during that time, but what we have here are five doom-metal masterpieces rather ironically untainted by the very trappings of the subgenre: repetition taken to tedious extremes, fogs of pot smoke so thick that the listener is blinded by what might very well be beauty at the core; overindulgence for overindulgence’s sake. Particularly on songs like “Station,” “Landing Lights” and “Night Comes Dawn,” Walker has created something fresh and new: clear-eyed, focused, minimalist yet illustrious doom metal. Perhaps it’s because he’s reached a transcendent understanding of the human condition, or something like it; the word “love” appears six times in the lyrics to the five songs.