Twenty years after Watching from a Distance, the bedside record of every broken heart in doom, Patrick Walker pulls Warning out of the grave — and the press falls to its knees. 87/100 across seven reviews, the best doom aggregate of the year. Kerrang! draws the full 5/5: Rituals of Shame « stands on its own next to » the band’s classics, « proudly its own thing ». Metal Hammer (9/10) hails « Harlow’s true cult doom legends returning from the wastes ».
The consensus is rare in its unanimity: nobody makes a slow guitar weep like Walker. Sputnikmusic (8.8) finds it « absolutely insane how they can come back after 20 years and drop an album of this magnitude », and Angry Metal Guy (4/5) sums up what the record is for: « You listen to Warning to reflect, to purge, and to feel. » A deeply human album about shame, grief and lost time, without a gram of fat.
The one measured voice, Spectrum Culture (72), concedes it is « as good a return as any you could hope for after 20 years » — as reservations go, we’ve seen worse. Public at 78/100: the only real complaint you can level at Rituals of Shame is that it leaves you in pieces.