Panopticon interview on Bandcamp Daily
Austin Lunn, aka Panopticon, gives a nice career retrospective on today's Bandcamp Daily.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/panopticon-black-metal-list
Austin Lunn, aka Panopticon, gives a nice career retrospective on today's Bandcamp Daily.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/panopticon-black-metal-list
Interesting stuff. I still criminally neglect his discography beyond Kentucky and The Scars of Man... and really need to delve into picking up some vinyl of his.
The tortured soul character certainly fits the music he makes but it is never melancholic for melancholy's sake, there's a real raw depth to it.
One release Austin doesn't touch on in this piece is last year's split album with Nechochwen, his contribution to which was the almost twenty minute track Rune's Heart which is about his son's (Rune) major heart surgery and his feelings around it. A fantastic and lesser known track that I would definitely urge you to check out.
I sat last night and watched the documentary on which most of the album Kentucky is based. It's a tough watch at times in terms of the quality of the footage but at the same time really interesting to understand the reality of the struggle and the levels of corruption and even murder that they encountered to eventually get nearer to what they wanted (the eventual contract wasn't as appealing across the board depending on age/years of service in the mines). Definitely worth a vie when you have a couple of hours to kill one evening.
Since there's already a Panopticon thread here, I've been digging into ...And Again Into the Light all this week and really enjoying it, but there's one thing that I'm just not getting about the album even after multiple listens. It feels like the folk element completely leaves during the back half of "Rope Burn Exit" and for the entirety of "A Snowless Winter" plus "Moth Eaten Soul" and awkwardly comes back in full force in "As Golden Laughter Echoes" only to be replaced by Post-Metal for the final two songs. Maybe because I enjoy the atmosphere and style of the opening track into "Dead Loons" so much that having the album progress away from that feels out of place, even though the progression makes sense? Pretty torn on it, still one of the best albums of the year but I feel like I'm missing something.