Warning "The Strength To Dream" Cassette

The first album from UKs Doom Metal legends Warning finally for the first time as stand alone music-cassette.
Limited to 300 copies.

Hm, the sophomore has whole 12 reviews, this album here has none… strange what captured the fans’ imagination to such an extent on that second instalment? Provided that the debut laid the foundations for every cord, note and nuance from it… anyway, the guys must have taken their name from the title of the debut (“Storm Warning”, 1990) of the Swedish heroes Count Raven as their approach to the slow-motion apocalypse is very similar.
This is doom with such a capital -D- that the capitalization rules must be rewritten promptly for another bigger-size letter to emerge in order to fit the label here. There are five compositions featured, closing on 50-min. The hypnotically academic style of the mentioned Count Raven magnum opus has been captured handsomely, but we have grave near-funeral doom processions, sorrowful elegiac passages, stomping elephantine steam-roller riffs, more poignant balladic deviations, marginally more melodious etudes… but no lead sections, not even a single one; and never an attempt at a more dynamic, not even close to the mid-tempo, song-writing. Not even for a split second. This is a slow-burning, patiently-marching, dark-coloured tank from beginning to end that surprisingly doesn’t seem so overtly threatening, but only due to the excellent emotional clean vocals of Patrick Walker; the man supervises the sombre musical parade with subdued pathos, keeping to a steady attached croon without any adventurous higher notes, exuding composure and authority from the hill where he has supposedly stationed himself in order to more carefully observe the inordinately serious proceedings.
With a throat from the ranks of, say, Skepticism’s Matti Tilaeus this opus would have sounded genuinely intimidating as the very consistent pounding riffage creates thick ominous atmosphere; the sun doesn’t shine in this realm… the cloud clout is too dense, and the guys don’t seem tempted at all in pricking it with any more optimistic motifs. And they shouldn’t cause this is the only way that one can create a solid monolithic dark saga, an unperturbed determined adherence to the vintage antediluvian doom sound, a steam-rolling behemoth that alone sounded sufficient to bring the dawn of a new era and reinstate the old school in all its splendour…
splendour that would surely test the patience of the more regular metal lover; this is a slow-mover bordering on the ponderous at times, but if one wants to taste the doom in its purest non-contaminated form, he/she should look no further as this is both a lesson in said genre and a statement of intent; an intent on coming very close to the doom metal throne, and why not even on sitting right on it… a warning to all present at the time doom metal practitioners this was, the latter watching from a distance how the sophomore descended upon the audience seven years later, a very similarly-constructed saga, with long hypnotic tale-telling pieces unnerving some and enchanting others… but it can’t be any other way with the true art; you’ve got to have a certain fandom for it. You can’t bewitch the entire planet…

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