The Warning Everything’s Falling review: ‘Their best and most dynamic work to date’

The making of the band’s fifth studio album came after the Villarreal Vélez sisters, Dany, Paulina and Alejandra, opted to take a three-month hiatus from international touring, wanting enough time to showcase the sonic and lyrical growth they’ve experienced since their fourth studio album ‘Keep Me Fed’. The result? A masterclass in hard rock, but with a lot of depth. The album features a number of drop tunings, the incorporation of electronic elements at times, and it’s a deeply personal listening experience.

‘Ritual’ blends a distorted guitar, hard-hitting drumming and a thick yet busy bass that feels like it does a great job of interlocking with the drums. It’s a song predominantly in a 4/4 time signature but shifts into 7/8 in the bridge, where the drumming becomes more propulsive and urgent, perfectly capturing the thematic concept of the song, which explores catastrophic thinking, anxiety, and anticipating disaster. “Everyone’s blissfully delusional. But I deprive myself like it’s a ritual,” Dany sings.

“Like a plague I carry around with my name. I keep bending backwards, starting to break,” Dany sings on ‘Perfect Daughter’, underlining that no matter how hard you strive to be perfect, you aren’t always seen that way. Pau is a powerhouse drummer, but compared to ‘Ritual’, the drumming feels a lot tighter, a lot more restrained. The pulsating bass provides an anchor with Dany’s gritty guitar, completing a unified wall of sound, providing the spaciousness to allow the emotional weight of the message to be heard clearly.

The title track explores the concept of pretending to be okay while dealing with an internal "rot". It’s a grunge-y song that features dark, moody guitars in the verses, which erupt into a distorted guitar part. Pau’s drumming provides a deep, resonant punch, and Ale’s bass plays an impactful, anchoring role. “What have I got to lose? What would I lose to gain? Everything's falling out of place,” Dany sings, acknowledging that while everything is unravelling, she's facing and confronting the emotional numbness of the situation with real defiance.

‘Why Do You Like It When I Cry?’ features a gritty guitar, with what I think has an octave pedal underneath it and a slapback delay to give it that monstrous wall of sound. A thick, busy bass line from Alejandra and Pau’s propulsive drumming gives the song a danceable feel, without straying into pop music. Lyrically, the song addresses a manipulative, emotionally exhausting relationship, using the metaphor of dodging bullets. There’s a sense of urgency and the emotional distress in Dany’s vocals, “Destructive for your amusement. Just want me to hurt again. Kind of obsessive, I got the message. The more you push and pull, the more I bend,” she sings. The Warning’s ability to craft the perfect rock song with raw, visceral human distress is unmatched.

A natural progression of songs

“They tell me, baby, go sing your little songs. Those eyes start creeping up and down my body. Looking for the cracks to sink my teeth into my porcelain,” Dany sings on ‘Bite My Tongue’. It feels very personal and invasive, and ‘Bite My Tongue’ feels like a fitting reflection of retaining your composure and your peace when part of you wants to snap at someone. Dany’s guitar playing feels really disciplined in the verses and pre-chorus, but the chorus sees a sonic explosion of distorted guitars, screaming out all the repressed rage of the lyrics, and the three Villarreal Velez sisters, who are all pianists, use a synthesiser to add an industrial touch to the track, filling it out to create a massive wall of sound.

The percussion section shines on ‘Kill Or Be Killed’. Pau uses a cowbell and toms extensively in the verses and flexes her muscles with some powerhouse drumming in the choruses. There are synth stabs thrown into the mix that are sharp and punchy, cutting through the wall of sound. Then amongst all of that there are Dany’s thick, distorted guitars that are continuous, allowing Pau the freedom to incorporate the cowbells and toms, while Ale’s driving bass lines tightly hold the rhythm together. It’s engrossing for the listener and truly enables them to immerse themselves into the frantic, high-stakes panic implied by the title.

‘Ego’ feels like the polar opposite of the previous two tracks. The song is performed in Spanish, allowing them to lean into the emotion of singing in their native tongue. Rather than opting for restraint, the band channels and embraces their inner rage. Dany seamlessly switches from clean melodic singing to primal screams. The guitars chug, the bass gives the song a thick, low-end, and performing-in-Spanish allows a punchier vocal delivery. It’s full of swagger and raw confidence, and the beauty of the album is that every song ties directly into each other, creating this natural progression that means skipping any is not optional. But in the form the Villarreal Vélez sisters are in, why would anyone want to skip anything?

‘Bloodsport’ is delivered with a funky, bouncy bass line, and the drumming feels incredibly disciplined and a masterclass in serving the song and not an ego. Pau is arguably one of the most gifted drummers in rock, yet she opts for restraint on this occasion, making the groove hit twice as hard. The instrumentation provides the perfect complement to the dark, manipulative confidence of the lyrics. “I like it when you’re sorry. It makes me feel lovely. What would you sacrifice? I wanna see the tears in your eyes. I wanna see your knuckles bleed when you fight for me,” Dany sings, seamlessly connecting the beautifully unhinged lyricism, the instrumentation and the "game-playing" nature of the theme.

A triumphant conclusion

‘Break’ is an epic power ballad that features acoustic-driven verses to provide a slow-burning buildup before giving way to distorted guitars, driving bass lines and punchy drumming. I think there’s a grunge-y guitar solo in there too. It paints a vivid picture of a total loss of control, exhaustion and a relationship that has reached its breaking point. “You got my heart bent out of shape. Sometimes I wish that it’d hurry up and break,” Dany sings.

For the first and second verses on ‘Bruises’, I am fairly certain The Warning opts to employ a dropout section for the bass, leaving the guitars and drums to carry the arrangement, which provides a call-and-response effect in those two sections. The guitars land emphatically on the first and third beats, and then the drums fill in afterwards. It provides the lyrics with the freedom to breathe, and Dany’s delivery makes it feel like the truth is personal, secretive and hushed. It’s restrained but masterful craftsmanship from one of the world’s best rock bands.

‘Waste Your Time On Me’ establishes a theme of a feeling of unworthiness from the opening verse. “Blue light and eyes wide open. I’m comatose. My sense of self is broken. I’m losing hope,” Dany sings before erupting into a full-blown plea in the chorus, “Crawl on my knees. I’m begging one more time. Let me be the one that gets you high. Oh my, I can make you feel alive,” she adds. The intro features a pulsing synthesiser to give the song an electronic pulse before the eruption of the bass and drums provides the track with a thick, driving feel and a feeling of a sudden awakening to explode the song into a hard-hitting rock track.

And the album’s closer, 'Kerosene', is unofficially a sibling track to ‘Ritual’ in many ways. Both songs represent the opposite end of the human spectrum of tension. It’s a defiant assault on copycats: "You rip my hair, my style, my jeans. I swear you copy everything. You try to write the songs I sing", fake friends and obsessives, "I know you fall asleep with me on your screen" and those desperate to tear The Warning down without having the courage to do so in person: “Strip down for me. I see right through you. Spit Kerosene. You know you want to. Say what you mean. Show me your teeth. When you are talking to me,” Dany urges. It’s full of swagger. Thick bass lines, Pau’s powerhouse drumming and distorted guitars, ending the album by firmly destroying the self-doubt and anxiety with a defiant and triumphant confidence.

You can listen to Everything’s Failing by The Warning on Apple Music now by clicking here.