Since 2007, Austin Lunn’s much-praised atmospheric black metal project Panopticon has plied its trade in searing meditations on everything from environmentalism, to the Appalachian coal mining industry and Native American oppression. Successfully realising a unique blend of folk, bluegrass, country and black metal, 2012 to 2015 saw Panopticon release a hat-trick of stellar albums in the form of Kentucky, Roads to the North and Autumn Eternal. These well-rendered conceptual statements brought the project high critical acclaim outside the black metal underground.
This year sees Lunn disentangling the folk and black metal elements of the Panopticon sound and presenting them separately across two LPs. Whilst not an entirely new experiment for the band (2018’s The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness double LP used a similar technique), it’s still a bold move. On Laurentian Blue and Songs of Hiraeth, it’s one that yields mixed results.
Laurentian Blue serves up the folkier side of things, with opener ‘Liberation Song’ setting out in the album’s stripped-down acoustic style. A gorgeously picked steel-string guitar and Lunn’s husky vocal calls to mind the purest of pure Americana. The chord progressions are stirring, the lyrics heartfelt and the clarity of the production makes for a rich, detailed listen. The press release references Townes Van Zandt, and certainly there’s plenty of bittersweet charm on offer here.
The extent to which listeners will engage with the album will depend largely on their tolerance for the kind of extreme sincerity that would make Bruce Springsteen blush. Laurentian Blue is almost painfully earnest, with songs like ‘I Want to be Alone’ and ‘Flowers in the Ditch’ exploring themes of loss and mortality in a mode entirely free from irony. At times it feels a little on the nose, but folk music (and black metal for that matter) doesn’t typically trade in post-modern detachment.
At the other end of the sonic spectrum, the electrified Songs of Hiraeth is at times just as pretty as its acoustic counterpart. The yearning, melancholic wash of ‘The Road to Bergen’ could be a particularly scuzzy Mogwai tune, and the soaring, tremolo-picked lead lines, crunchy double kicks and reverby vocals on ‘From Bergen to Jotunheimen’ are savagely beautiful. It’s an album preoccupied with journeys, and these songs are indeed transportive and engrossing.
Unlike Laurentian Blue, Songs of Hiraeth is composed of old, unreleased material, remixed and finally shown the light of day. Whilst not originally intended as an album, the pieces sit well together and the sequencing is effective. Black metal purists will find satisfaction in the grim discordance of ‘Haunted America II’, while the spacy, post rock moments on ‘A Letter’ provide both respite and catharsis.
Panopticon has always been a vessel for Lunn’s personal, spiritual and staunchly leftist political interests. Laying these bare on an acoustic record is brave and exposing, and on these grounds alone the separate release strategy is commendable. Arguably though, it was the more direct blending of American folk instrumentation and high-gain extreme metal that made Panopticon such an exciting proposition ten years ago. With plenty of interesting moments, both of these records justify their own existence but you can’t help wondering if there’s still territory left unexplored in the genuine melding of these disparate yet complimentary styles.
