As Warning prepare to release their first new music in twenty years, Patrick Walker is self-effacing about what led to this moment. Over the last two decades he has continued to write and release music; his attention was diverted to 40 Watt Sun, satisfied that he had achieved what he had set out to do with Warning. But in those intervening years, interest in Warning has swelled, organically gathering an ardent fanbase. In particular, the 2006 album, Watching from a Distance, has gained a cult following. After a successful string of shows playing the album in 2017, Patrick knew he had a solid live band on hand but did not feel the call to write new Warning material.

In response to a transformative period in his life, Patrick turned towards writing new songs, and it soon became apparent that these belonged to Warning. In early January 2025, he started with a completely blank canvas, and piece by piece, day by day he started to fill it with ideas that evolved to become the songs that make up Rituals of Shame. He worked on the material all day, seven days a week, over three months, his immersion in the project becoming a full-time pursuit.

In the slivers of time in between writing, a deal with Relapse was struck to release the album, which gave Patrick further impetus to complete the task in hand. He booked studio time for June and November 2025; the first period earmarked to demo the tracks, and the second to record. After successfully demoing the five songs - and completing a long North American tour as 40 Watt Sun - he retreated to a remote house on a hill outside Florence, Italy, to finesse the lyrics.

Recording took place at The Arch Studio, a 140-year-old former church in Southport, UK with recording and mixing handled by Chris Fullard (Idles, Sunn O))), Ulver). Having already worked with Chris on two 40 Watt Sun records, Patrick had developed an appreciation for his way of working: providing a light touch of structure to the process, allowing the songs to unfold as Patrick intended.

Lifelong musical inspirations of Patrick’s can be traced through Rituals of Shame, although they may at first be hard to identify. The ambitious structural arrangements harken to Marillion’s complex but soaring episodic songs. They retain a sparsity that is reminiscent of June Tabor’s economic arrangements; thick with melody but with a diaphanous air to them. Citing John Brenner of Revelation as an enduring inspiration, Patrick credits him with introducing the idea of how to infuse heavy music with significant emotional depth.

The cover art for Rituals of Shame was created by Tekla Vály, who had previously created the art for Watching from a Distance: Live at Roadburn. As Patrick worked on the lyrics, he realised that he wanted to return to Tekla’s distinctive vision and aesthetic for the accompanying art for this new release. He didn’t give her a brief; instead, he shared the album’s themes and sent her the demos. The resulting images perfectly capture the essence and mood of the album - poignant, transportive, and undeniably human. Often reluctant to be drawn on the minutiae of his lyrics, Patrick does acknowledge that making this album was a direct response to the very present period of his life, its concerns being immediate. Rituals of Shame also echoes the enduring themes and fixations that have marked most of his work: guilt, shame, personal failure, obsession, longing and separation, but, most of all, he says, love.