The Rime of Memory

Panopticon

If you want to know how good Panopticon is, this is everyones Album of the Year and is only the third best Panopticon album.

Official Description

This album has 2 meanings. You can see this album solely as a rant about the climate crisis and wilderness advocacy. Or you can see this album as a coming to terms with the aging process… Or, as I do, you can see it allergoricaly about both. I wrote this album in my years of 37 to 40. It’s strange to remember my parents at my age and think about how different it feels…raising my own children…having my own career…my own priorities…my own struggles. They did too. Passing by their mile stones, we begin to humanize them… they stop being the distant untouchable monoliths, towering over us…and we begin to see the cracks in them… just as we begin to crack, ourselves. Every time I go home, I drink a beer or two at my old man’s grave. His final mile stone… One day, my boys just may drink a beer at mine.

My Thoughts

I have been a fan of Austin Lunn (and the other Austin Lunn who played with Austin 1 in Agnosis) for as long as he has been releasing music under the Panopticon moniker. I don’t think it is much of a stretch to say that Panopticon is now (and has been for most of the last decade) one of the best black metal bands on the planet.

I have harped again and again about what makes black metal appealing to me is atmosphere. And really, Austin is the master of atmosphere. This album opens with nearly 10 minutes of moody neofolk (far from the Appalachian tinged neofolk that graced his first albums and ensured my interest) before the unremittingly bleak and decidedly unmelodic black metal onslaught begins.

Unlike earlier Panopticon albums, there are few quiet passages here, less breaks from the onslaught of grimness and desolation. Given that the record comes in at just shy of 80 minutes, this is simply too much. Too heavy. Too unrelenting. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it needs some more variation. Not at the same level as Kentucky and Autumn Eternal, but maybe the third best Panopticon album out of the ten full-length records so far.

For Fans Of

• Gallowbraid
• Wayfarer
• Twilight Fauna