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**Warning - Watching From A Distance**
★★★★★

There are albums that arrive like a gentle summer breeze, and then there are those that descend upon you with the crushing weight of a collapsing star. Warning's "Watching From A Distance" belongs firmly in the latter category – a monument to human despair so towering and magnificent that it makes Leonard Cohen sound like he's whistling show tunes.

By 2006, Warning had already established themselves as purveyors of the slowest, heaviest doom metal this side of a geological epoch. Patrick Walker's previous work had hinted at the emotional devastation to come, but nothing could have prepared the metal underground for what would emerge as his magnum opus – and, tragically, Warning's swan song. The album was born from the ashes of a relationship that had clearly left Walker emotionally eviscerated, transforming personal anguish into six movements of such profound melancholy that listening feels like attending your own funeral.

Musically, "Watching From A Distance" exists in that rarefied air where doom metal transcends its genre constraints and becomes something approaching high art. This isn't the cartoonish Sabbath worship that plagued lesser bands; instead, Walker crafted something that owes as much to Nick Drake as it does to Candlemass. The guitars move with tectonic patience, each chord given space to breathe and decay naturally, while Walker's vocals – clean, vulnerable, and utterly bereft of metal posturing – deliver lyrics with the kind of naked honesty that makes you want to simultaneously embrace the man and check he's still breathing.

The album's centrepiece, "Bridges," unfolds over nearly fourteen minutes like a slow-motion car crash filmed in sepia tones. Walker's guitar work here is nothing short of masterful – deceptively simple melodies that burrow into your subconscious and refuse to leave. When he sings "I built these bridges just to watch them fall," you believe every syllable has been carved from his very soul. It's the sound of a man staring into the abyss and finding it disappointingly familiar.

"Footprints" serves as perhaps the album's most devastating moment, a nine-minute meditation on absence that manages to make emptiness feel tangible. The sparse arrangement – just Walker, his guitar, and the weight of the world – creates an intimacy so uncomfortable it feels voyeuristic. This is music that doesn't just soundtrack depression; it inhabits it completely.

The title track bookends the album with a different kind of despair – one tinged with acceptance rather than raw wound-licking. Here, Walker sounds like a man who has made peace with his isolation, though whether this represents healing or surrender remains beautifully ambiguous. The guitar melody, simple yet haunting, lingers long after the final note fades, leaving listeners in a silence that feels pregnant with unspoken grief.

What elevates "Watching From A Distance" above mere emotional exhibitionism is Walker's remarkable restraint. Lesser artists would have drowned such material in overwrought arrangements or theatrical bombast. Instead, every element serves the songs' emotional core – the production is warm yet spacious, the performances understated yet powerful. This is music that trusts in the power of space and silence as much as sound.

The album's influence on the doom metal scene cannot be overstated. Countless bands have attempted to capture its lightning in a bottle, but few have understood that its power lies not in its heaviness but in its humanity. Walker didn't just write songs about heartbreak; he created a sonic architecture for it, complete with rooms for rage, corridors of regret, and windows overlooking infinite sadness.

Tragically, "Watching From A Distance" marked Warning's end rather than a new beginning. Walker would later emerge with 40 Watt Sun, pursuing a more acoustic-based approach to similar themes, but never again would he achieve the perfect storm of circumstances that birthed this masterpiece. Perhaps that's fitting – some statements are so complete they can only be made once.

Fifteen years later, "Watching From A Distance" remains unmatched in its field – a towering achievement that proves metal's capacity for genuine emotional depth. It's an album that doesn't just demand to be heard; it insists on being felt, preferably in the small hours when the world feels as empty as Walker's lyrics suggest it always was.