Patrick Walker is back with a new doom metal band ever since he broke up Warning. And with a new album under their belt, they are doing a few gigs around Europe, including this Sunday afternoon gig in Rotterdam. Not that it was a full house, maybe 50 people came to check them out.

There were two support slots, of which the first was for the Swedish Semlah. I listened to a couple of their songs on youtube and thought they were ok. Turned out that was exactly the way they were live. As with many classic doom metal bands, the problem is usually either they’re just boring or the singer in not very capable. In this case a bit of both although not all that awkward.

Mirror of Deception is another classic doom metal band who were without their bass-player due to illness. This band has both problems, boring and a bad singer (or two actually). A few nice lead guitar sections break some of the mediocrity.

I listened to the 40 Watt Sun album a few times, but not too often. They sound not too different from Warning, but their are some changes. The riffs are a bit thinner and simpler, the drums less pounding and the speed has picked up a bit on average too. The band centres clearly around Patrick as the bass player stays way in the back and the drummer doesn’t draw any attention. They start off with the opening track of the new album, called Restless and eventually work through every song on the album. Musically it sounded a bit thinner than on the album, probably because they’re just a trio. And some the songs sound a bit too similar at times. For the encore they came back to a song I didn’t know, so I guess this was the extra song on the double LP version of the album and very minimalistic. I guess that Patrick really wants to leave Warning behind as no Warning song was played. All in all a pretty good gig but somehow I felt a bit let down, maybe because I don’t know the songs too well or because I missed Warning’s latest tour.