PANOPTICON
Laurentian Blue

digipack 
With Panopticon’s 5th full-length album, Kentucky, Austin Lunn pushed the boundaries and blurred the lines between melodic US black metal and folk driven Americana. Bluegrass, with its high and lonesome sound and cultural and emotional significance, provided the perfect backdrop for Austin’s lyrical exploration of the Kentucky's rich cultural heritage and unique environment as well as coal miner's plight to stand up against the cruelty of a greed driven fossil fuel industry as they struggled to organize a union to fight against horrific working conditions. The album is about more than just coal mining history...it is a love letter to the " blue grass state" and the beautiful people and places contained within its borders.
 

Kentuckian living in Minnesota returns with his most sorrowful, introspective album yet. A search for hope in a bleak world. Easily the darkest and heaviest record of his entire career. 

A deeply introspective work, the 2023 “The Rime of Memory” is the second chapter in Panopticon’s trilogy exploring ageing, grief, and the emotional fallout of environmental collapse. Expanding on the themes introduced in “...And Again into the Light”, this album leads listeners into colder, more cinematic territory – weaving Appalachian folk, symphonic grandeur, and searing metal into a single, immersive journey.

With sweeping orchestral movements, a global choir, and collaborations in both sound and visual art, “The Rime of Memory” stands as one of Austin Lunn’s most expansive statements to date. Shifting between moments of crushing intensity and quiet contemplation, it draws the listener into a world shaped by memory, sorrow, and a fragile sense of hope.