Panopticon

Inspired by the originators of black metal, Louisville, Kentucky-based musician Austin Lunn launched his solo project Panopticon in 2007. The first recordings echoed the style of Darkthrone and Emperor through raw production and aggressive black metal guitars, while the lyrics and notes overflowed with anarchist politics and radical leftist ideas. After the 2008 self-titled CD, Panopticon issued a string of split releases alongside sympathetic acts such as Lake of Blood, Skagos, Wheels Within Wheels, and others. Collapse, the 2009 full-length, shifted toward darker, atmospheric textures that carried political commentary and preceded the 2011 album Social Disservices.

Kentucky arrived in 2012 as a tribute to Lunn’s home state, pairing traditional Appalachian melodies and instruments including fiddle, banjos, and string bass with the abrasive force of black metal. Roads to the North followed in 2014 and continued to examine the fusion of American folk elements with cold black metal. Autumn Eternal, released in fall 2015, largely abandoned folk explorations in favor of blurred lines between black metal, death metal, and hard rock. The sole exception, opening track “Tamarack's Gold Returns,” spotlighted Lunn’s acoustic fingerpicking and Johan Becker’s violin. Guests on the Colin Marston-produced recording included Petri Eskelinen of Finnish band Rapture and cellist Nostarion from Dämmerfarben. A split with Germany’s Waldgeflüster appeared on Nordvis in 2016; that same year Lunn issued the compilation Revisions of the Past, containing heavily remastered versions of On the Subject of Mortality and Social Disservices.

In spring 2018 Lunn delivered the two-part double album Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness. Physical editions were issued separately as part one and part two, while the digital version presented the material as one continuous album, its intended format. The first half emphasized atmospheric metal, the second concentrated on Americana, and Lunn, backed by a large ensemble of musicians, performed close to a dozen instruments himself. Scars II (The Basics) followed in 2019 with stripped-down demos and alternate takes drawn from the Americana portion of Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic quarantines, Lunn released Live Migration as an interim recording.

The expansive and unusually optimistic …and Again Into the Light emerged in May 2021, seamlessly threading Americana, country, and folk through hybridized doom and black metal, often within single tracks. While potent black metal atmospheres remained central, Lunn placed equal weight on melody and vocal harmony alongside lyrics of hope and personal redemption. Many critics subsequently named it the strongest entry in Panopticon’s catalog. Its counterpart, 2023’s The Rime of Memory, found Lunn playing numerous instruments in sometimes funereal arrangements that balanced texture and ambience against buzzing guitars and incendiary blastbeats; the six songs exceed 75 minutes in length.