Review by Sonny for Warning (GBR) - The Strength to Dream (1999)

With my perpetual touting of "Watching From A Distance" as the greatest album of all-time (and don't bother debating me on this, your piteous cries of protest will fall on deaf ears), I suppose it's time to write a few lines about Warning's "other" album, their debut from 1999, The Strength to Dream. It is obvious that this is nowhere near as well-regarded as their classic and chances are that the majority of doomsters haven't even listened to it. This is not exactly without reason, as it is nowhere near as accomplished as the sophomore and is more of an example of a band learning their trade and honing both their technical and songwriting skills than it is a band emerging fully-formed and proficient.

One of the distinctive features of Watching From A Distance is the emotional and heartfelt vocal performance of Patrick Walker and that is a major factor in it being considered (certainly by me anyway) to be one of the most affecting metal albums ever committed to record. Yet here, a mere seven years earlier, Patrick's singing is, to put it kindly, not the best. The performance is weak and he really seems to be struggling to stay in tune at times. The difference between these two performances is striking and is testament to how hard Patrick must have worked on his singing between the two releases. Secondly, the production isn't particulary good for a doom metal release, being little better than decent demo quality, robbing the riffs of a lot of their depth and heft, leaving it lacking the crushing and smothering weight that great doom metal thrives on.

It's not all bad news though, drummer Stuart Springthorpe still sounds exceedingly authoritative throughout the album, with his fill-heavy style working just as well here as on the later release and there are some pretty decent Reverend Bizarre-like riffs, especially on my favourite track, How Can It Happen, which is a track I would really like to have heard re-recorded or maybe even played live, because I rate it very highly as a straight-up doom anthem. In fact, I think the whole album would sound massively different with the technical improvements and production of the later album, because this is actually a solid set of songs.

I think Strength To Dream would always have struggled to escape the shadow of it's more illustrious younger sibling, but the glaring deficiencies in both production and PW's vocal performance exacerbate the situation, leaving it gaining a reputation, with more than a little justification, as nothing more than a warm-up for the main event of Warning's career. It's worth a listen because you can hear the germ of what would later be a classic album, but it is also an object lesson in patience and illustrates that sometimes a band needs to work on perfecting their craft before committing to releasing their best material.