Panopticon - Collapse

Pagan Flames/ Lundr, 2009

It's good to hear more pro-green anarchy/ semi-primitivist/ pagan anarchist black metal that isn't in the blackened crust realm (bands like Iskra, Hotbild, etc. have a time and place for me, but the sound can get boring fast). What we have here is something more in the vein of post-rock influenced progressive Cascadian Black Metal such as Wolves In The Throne Room. The album begins with choice tv-news samples of the mid-2008 nigh-apocalypse (or at least it seemed that way, it really was just America getting poked economically into going "maybe we're not masters of the universe"). They remind me of the equally apocalyptic start to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's F♯ A♯ ∞ (a reference point for many bands like this). The song then progresses into pro atmospheric black metal licks before about 5 minutes out, where the electric guitars flicker out, a sample of a match being lit plays, and the the song finishes out with a fucking great cascade of folk guitar, which has much more to do with bluegrass than is the eurocentric norm with folk-metal hybrids (the artist afterall is from Kentucky). I chuckled at such an ingenious anti-technological gesture, and the well-needed acknowledgment of the irony of creating pseudo-primitivist music with electric instruments. The rest of the album follows suite, with natural ambience and depressive folk/bluegrass sections interspersed with black metal bombast. A great new artist, this album and his splits with Lake Of Blood and Wheels Within Wheels are not to be missed.

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