Panopticon - And Again Into The Light.

Those buildups are agony-soaked vocals and glacial blast beats, a burning effigy of pain on a lonely hill…

In truly great works of art, often the art is inseparable from the inner life of the artist. A deeply personal journey can be conveyed in such an emotional and transparent way as to make the outsider feel very much a part of the experience. The man behind Panopticon, Austin Lunn, said in an interview that a lot of the imagery “...is mostly taken from bogs…so that the plants grow top towards the sun from the murky waters and moss below. That's essentially the concept of the album”. Bloody hell, it only gets deeper…

The album opens with glorious strings, mountain winds and rustling leaves. It is all a sense of calm before the storm. ‘Dead Loons’ is so fierce and intense it catches you off guard, it is soul-strippingly dark and honest. Panopticon ebbs and flows to spectacular buildups which bridges the gap between Black Metal and Post Metal perfectly. Those buildups are agony-soaked vocals and glacial blast beats, a burning effigy of pain on a lonely hill.

Other favourites of ours are ‘Rope Burn Exits’ and ‘The Embers at Dawn’, the guitars here are brilliant but just mentioning this won’t do the sheer instrumental breadth of the album justice. Lap steel, mandolin, banjo, violin and resonator are all called up from the painters palette and used to stunning effect. That's just what we’ve taken away from this experience. Austin Lunn has bared his soul and in doing so asks us to strive through grief to a better time and not lose ourselves to emptiness. This is a future classic, mark our words.