Panopticon - The Crescendo of Dusk

I honestly did not have my hopes set very high for this short little release when I saw that Austin Lunn was giving us a pair of leftovers from the previous two Panopticon studio album sessions; and what a fool I feel like for my doubt.
When it comes to artists going back through the archives and pulling out some old artifacts, it usually sounds like demo scraps that should have stayed where they were left, even if polished up a bit for an official release, and it’s usually very clear why said tracks were left off whatever album(s) originally.
Well it is clear why Austin chose not to include these songs on either Autumn Eternal or either side of his double album last year; the two songs (especially the first song for which this release is named) are both rather stylistically and thematically distinct and work a bit better on their own than forced into an album in which they might not flow as well.
The second track, “The Labyrinth”, is a folky, acoustic guitar-driven piece that eventually becomes well-supported by some ethereal choral vocals and some tasteful chimes, with a softly spoken narrative about what I gather to be a meditative foray through a cemetery or war memorial and the connection many seek for to their ancestral pasts.
It’s a sonically soothing and poetically subtle song that doesn’t go for any kind of metallic bombast to draw you in, but its lyrical and instrumental nuances are rewarding and interesting for those who will yield their ears and minds to them.
The first track, however, is certainly a boisterous, metallic thrill ride.
“The Crescendo of Dusk” is a surprising type of song to be hearing from Panopticon, but also the type of song which I would expect to sound great coming from Panopticon, and it does sound great. Not leaning this time on the often-incorporated bluegrass elements that show up on the second of the two songs, “The Crescendo of Dusk” finds Austin reaching ethereally higher than ever with the other types of musical elements he brings in to this offering of his special brand of naturalist ambient black metal.
Austin certainly risked the diminishment of the uniqueness of Panopticon’s sound on this song with his foray into the more traditional side of ambient black metal’s nature worship, but the grandness and signature dynamic of the song’s composition make it more than just an amateurish bright atmospheric black metal piece and something unmistakably Panopticon.
The gorgeous choir backing the cathartic tremolo picking, the touching guitar leads and solos amid galloping blast beats, the ambient hums of strings in the song’s quieter sections, Austin’s screams and echoed clean vocals, and the reverberation of the clean guitars that support the ambiance are all worked together in such a magnificently harmonious manner that so beautifully conveys the harmony of the natural world.
This was such a pleasent surprise from Austin Lunn, both in its unteased release, and in its quality despite its originating from his projects’ cutting room floors. The title track especially deserved its own release for how much it steals the spotlight and likely would have stolen the spotlight on The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, Pt. 1. The first song is such an enlightening thing of beauty that seems to only take the spirit higher and higher, while the second song is an appropriately mellow and contemplative cool down of sorts, making for an otherworldly, yet very natural, 22-minute experience. It seems like Austin really had been dedicated to a very special artistic premise for these songs and I’m glad he was able to put them out in a way he saw fit, because they are phenomenal and breathtaking, even by Panopticon’s high standards.
Northern lights/10

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