Behind Panopticon stands a single man, Austin Lunn, a multi-instrumentalist settled in the great American open spaces, who has made his project one of the summits of atmospheric black metal across the Atlantic. For some fifteen years he has interwoven Nordic fury and the folk music of the Appalachians, the banjo and the blast beats, political commitment and the contemplation of nature. The Rime of Memory extends this approach, tinting it with a crepuscular winter.
The critics (an 85 average across eight reviews) underline the breadth and coherence of a record conceived as a long poem on cold, loss and the passing of time. They hail a patient writing, an ability to build emotion by accumulation, and that very particular way of letting vast instrumental stretches breathe.
Musically, The Rime of Memory embraces slowness and elongation. The tracks, very long, unfold like snowy landscapes as far as the eye can see: sheets of guitar, distant choirs, melancholy melodies that surface then dissolve into the mist. Black metal, here, is not an end but a means — that of expressing an almost cosmic solitude before the frozen immensity.
This ambition has its downside: the record’s density and length demand total engagement, and one may regret that the profusion sometimes dilutes the strongest moments. This is not a music of the instant but of duration, earned across repeated listens.
Verdict: 8.5/10. A demanding, deeply inhabited work confirming Panopticon as one of the most singular and sincere voices of contemporary black metal.
