WARNING

Almost to the day, a year after their first opus, WARNING released this second album, all in red. Set against a blood-colored backdrop, the metal gallinac illustrating the cover, a sort of backyard robocop with sharp, protruding dewclaws, could have been the first scorpions to have a go... No wonder, with Dieter DERKS at the helm. The band takes the formula of their previous album a step further. With tracks such as ROCK CITY, COMMANDO and SERIE NOIRE, the first half of the album is almost entirely dedicated to pure, unadulterated heavy metal.

Raphaël GARRIDO draws on the clichés of our favorite genre (sex, drugs, Satanism, loubardism and rock'n'roll...) to devise little scenarios as subtle as they are mysterious. Raphaël could have written for the real SERIE NOIRE! As WARNING asserts its firepower (the arrival of a new rhythm section led by Gerald MANCEAU and Michel AYME no doubt also has something to do with it), the A-side of this second album may seem a little less daring than the previous one, but the band nevertheless breaks new ground.

FIRE FIRE heralds the beginnings of speed metal, which was still very much underground at the time. The guitar chorus on this track is undoubtedly one of Christophe AUBERT's finest. SPEED MOI makes the transition to a more rock'n'roll but also more adventurous B-side. The fabulous BAHAMAS MEMORIAL, a kind of Blues-tinged heavy rock, all metalized WARNING-style (whose marvellous intro flirts with Billy GIBBONS' swing boogie!), has a Californian tinge hitherto unheard of in the band's repertoire. The harder-than-metal STRANGE WAY OF LOVE and SEXY LUBIE are brimming with more surprising finds than ever before. Album II reaches its climax with PLANET REVERSE and its cascade of sunny riffs and paradoxically impenetrable lyrics. The band even borrows the vocoder, or a synthesizer in the same vein as Neil YOUNG's TRANSE period...how daring is that?