Panopticon - The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, Pt. 2

The second “absolutely not metal” half of Panopticon’s double album this year isn’t quite as fervently un-metal as it’s marked to be. It still makes use of some electric guitar and even some occasionally pounding drumming. It’s nothing close to black metal, but it sure isn’t the hokey Nashville country that comes to mind with the worrisome premonition of a “country album” (not that I was ever at all worried that Austin Lunn would indulge in that bullshit). Lunn continues his conservationist message on this album focusing more on appreciating the lifestyle of those more in touch the wilderness around them.

With Lunn being more vocally comfortable in the lower register with slightly breathy techniques, the album’s instrumentals play to his vocal strengths, thus making most of it rather slow-tempo and meditative. 

Songs like “Four Walls of Bone”, a more pensive and drawn-out song carried by the combined beauty of its traditional instrumentation, the song “Beast Rider”, and the nicely harmonized and heart-wrenching musing upon one’s aging of “Not Much Will Change When I’m Gone” (a fantastic song) serve as the ambient bulk of the album.

The record isn’t all slow melancholic folk and bluesy Americana though, and its departures from the mainly meditative feel of most of the tracks help give it some more life.

The truly cathartic ambient post-rock build of the first half of the opening track, “The Moss Beneath the Snow”, is an immediate invalidation of the album’s non-metal status (though perhaps intended as a transition phase from the first part of the double album). Subsequently embellished by calm acoustic guitars and (what I think are) plucked violins over a gorgeously harmonized message of perseverance and optimism, its epic musical journey makes for one of Panopticon’s best songs to date. The quick, banjo-heavy “The Wandering Ghost” that follows is another unique moment on the album for its higher energy alone, but it seems a bit awkward in its position right afterward in the track listing. It’s a pretty fun storytelling track nonetheless. 

Lunn’s criticism of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration hypocrisy on “The Itch” wasn’t something I was anticipating to hear on this album, though perhaps I should have given Lunn’s past expression of distaste for a variety of inhumane institutions. I just wasn’t expecting it quite such an upfront and kind of comedic fashion. Lambasting Trump’s manipulative and transparently selfish pandering without even naming him, it’s a definite standout.

“(Cowering) At the Foot of the Mountain” brings both of the musical tendencies of the album together with a climactic post-metal conclusion to its somber beginnings that sounds like something at home on a Deafheaven song, and more mid-tempo banjo plucking of the finisher, “A Devil Walked the Woods”, is a welcome change of pace, though a somewhat mild finale to the album.

I was honestly expecting more instrumental and emotional diversity on the album, something not only more representative of what Lunn has done with this style with Panopticon, but perhaps a wider expansion on his love for this type of music so unused within metal. Nevertheless, its more meditative moments serve their purpose nicely, and the more full-bodied tracks on the album do well to provide a healthy bit of diversity to the album without being distracting. I actually have yet to listen to both halves together in one sitting; I’m waiting for an opportunity to take Lunn’s suggestion and enjoy both parts on a long, solitary hike in the woods. I’m sure it will be inspiring and conducive to taking time to give my mind a break from all the technological world’s stresses and reveling in the natural beauty of ecosystems untransformed by man.