Warning: Watching From a Distance (Reissue)

"In a 2019 interview with Machine Music-one of the few he's ever given-Patrick Walker pushed back on the notion that Warning makes "very loud folk music." His retort, palpably prickly even in text: "I don't see that connection there. Warning was very much about riffs, and was a metal album." It's understandable that Walker's interlocutor would pursue this line of questioning. Warning's singular approach to doom metal has a way of making you disbelieve your own ears."

"On their now-classic sophomore LP, Watching from a Distance, the UK band paired slow, heavy guitar riffs with Walker's nakedly emotional lyrics and pleading, edge-of-tears vocals, a combination that has long sent listeners scrambling for comparisons to sad-bastard folk, goth rock, and, most perniciously, emo. On a new 20th anniversary reissue, the album sounds as idiosyncratic (and as metal) as ever, and Warning's confrontational vulnerability feels ahead of its time."

"Metalheads have never been afraid of high drama, but they tend to prefer it dressed in the genre's signature heightened imagery. Iron Maiden will put a lump in your throat, but they'll do it by convincingly conjuring the last thoughts of a doomed soldier, not by moaning about a breakup. Candlemass broke new ground for histrionics in metal, but their best songs were about demons, sorcerers, and witches."

Patrick Walker rejected the claim that Warning made loud folk music, emphasizing riffs and a metal foundation. Watching from a Distance combines slow, heavy guitar riffs with nakedly emotional lyrics and pleading, edge-of-tears vocals. The album's direct emotional clarity invites comparisons to folk, goth rock, and emo, yet remains rooted in doom metal. Unlike metal's tradition of heightened, fantastical imagery, these songs present immediate, unvarnished sadness without metaphor. Successors such as Pallbearer and Spirit Adrift adopted similar emotional openness. A 20th anniversary reissue preserves the album's idiosyncratic, confrontational vulnerability and distinct metal identity.

Read at Pitchfork