40 WATT SUN "The Inside Room" (2011)

band: 40 Watt Sun album: The Inside Room year: 2011 genres: doom metal
origin: United Kingdom

WARNING! FEW WATTS SUN

I can’t find the words to explain what I felt when I found out about the return of Patrick Walker to the doom metal scene. You surely remember him as the vocalist, guitarist and song writer of the now legendary doom metal band Warning who produced one of the best albums in the genre: “Watching from a Distance” a colossal discharge of emotions, slowness and heavy riffage released at 2006. Unfortunately, Warning came to its end three years later. I didn’t know anything about them until this year. In March was released an album by a band named 40 Watt Sun, whose line-up is extremely surprising, featuring Patrick Walker. Looking for information in the web, we find that they’ve been playing live using this name since 2009. Patrick Walker has joined Christian Leitch, member of the well known doom metal band The River, he was the second drummer of Warning as well. A new bassist, William Spong, joined too. Although 40 Watt Sun’s first show was five years ago, they didn’t release anything ‘til this year. This first production is actually a full-length album, including 5 brand new songs. It is entitled “The Inside Room”. So, let’s see what’s inside this dark room:

Personally, “Watching from a Distance” is one of my favorite albums ever and you can imagine what I was expecting from this new release. Furthermore, it’s impossible not to compare anything related to Walker with “Watching from a Distance”. This kind of comparisons are source of bad criticism and use to annihilate worth listening albums. But this is not the case. Let me tell you that “The Inside Room” is an amazing album and will not disappoint any Warning fan. 40 Watt Sun features all the highlights one can expect from a Patrick Walker’s album: slowness, extremely heavy guitars, his unique vocal interpretation and, of course, a lot of melancholy and emotions. In fact, one can’t understand why this is not a Warning album.

Guitars inside this room are heavy as hell, they’re very distorted, sometimes noisy. Riffs are quite slow and monolithic. Each song is repetitive and monotonous which is not a problem for doom metal fans at all. This kind of monolithic music brings a more twisted atmosphere, up to 9 minutes long songs creates very depressive feeling in the listener of this album. This is how, drums are also down-tempo and slow enough for a funeral doom metal song. One of the new elements in this recording is the use of acoustic guitars in some passages. Opening song “Restless” includes these guitars in the chorus part. Nonetheless, this is not the only new thing for Warning fans: I find some light in Patrick’s song writing. This is not the same of the new Anathema's approach, but a tight ray of light across the sea of emotions expressed by Walker. Specially, paying attention to the last track “This Alone”:

“But you make me feel like I’m someone else
You make me smile
You make me know myself
You make me feel like I’m someone else
And I’ll fold you here in the back of my mind and I’ll let you go now”

However, I don’t find it happy at all. Personally, I get it as a farewell or the feeling of the existence of something that can bring peace but it’s not always there. Nevertheless, it’s almost a waste of time trying to understand completely such personal lyrics in the typical style of Walker. He expresses himself referring to very specific moments, including time indications and, even, names of places. Although some moments of the album shows some light, the overall mood of lyrics is melancholy, nostalgia and longing. Of course, self Patrick Walker interprets these lines in a very well way. His vocals are expressive and poignant. Just the way we like him to do it.

If you’re asking for the best moments of this wonderful album, let me tell you that each second is worth listening to. However, since the album was released I’ve been in love with first track “Restless” and the last two ones: “Carry Me Home” and “This Alone”. These songs are quite melancholic and its melodies are amazing. “Carry me Home” has, i.m.o., the best lyrics in the album. “This Alone” has a funeral doom driven rhythm, becoming the slowest song of this record.

The few changes in this album do not really modify notably the sound we already knew. 40 Watt Sun keeps on sounding like Warning, I don’t know if this kind of comments bother Patrick Walker, they shouldn’t, since he has to feel very proud of his time in Warning. And, surely, 40 Watt Sun will make it on its own, starting with this masterpiece!

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