Review: Panopticon – Laurentian Blue
Emotionally raw, stripped-back songs for the woods, mountains, and hearth fires.
And now for something completely different, kinda. Panopticon is the widely-acclaimed atmospheric black and folk metal project of Austin Lunn and for the last 2 decades he’s consistently delivered quality music that oscillates between lush and hard-hitting. However, while Lunn has basically perfected his particular style of metal and has cut his teeth in other metal projects, the man is also a passionate lover of some good ol’ Americana and Appalachian folk music. He’s released music as Panopticon in those styles to a somewhat mixed reception, and for 2025’s Laurentian Blue, Lunn once again brings his mountain man bonafides.
Laurentian Blue is indeed an Americana folk album: just Lunn’s voice, strings (guitar, bass, banjo), and an accordion, with occasional violins, percussion and backing vocals from guests. Moreover, this is by far Lunn’s most stripped back full-length; his last fully non-black metal album was 2018’s The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, Part 2 and even then that record had synths, ambiance and more elaborate compositions and arrangements. This record though? As bare-bones as it gets; in that sense this also makes it Lunn’s rawest record, and not just musically.
It goes without saying, but if you’re not a fan of country, folk, Americana or anything that even remotely involves acoustic instruments with a twang and gruff melodic singing, then this record is most certainly not for you. Furthermore, even if you have a more open mind, like folk music or are already familiar with Lunn’s folk leanings—which have been present in Panopticon since the very beginning—this album is very, very downtrodden, with Lunn stating that he was in a very dark place when he wrote the music and the album is a genuine reflection of that. This is what I mean by raw; the record is pure emotion, and everything from the lyrics and songwriting to the actual performances sells it. And then “Irony and Actuality” happens. Ok, so lyrically, the 7th track and virtual midpoint break keeps in line with the rest of the more melancholic and brooding songs, but I can’t for the life of me take a fast-paced banjo seriously; after ~25 minutes of very dark and introspective folk, hearing this saloon knees-up tune honestly had me laughing my ass off from the sheer sonic whiplash. Again, lyrically the album is consistent, very somber and full of existential dread, but you do need to pay attention to the lyrics because you can probably slip this song in the next local hoedown and nobody will bat an eye.
That being said, while I do enjoy whenever artists in extreme metal take wild swerves in their music and this is a record I enjoyed overall, it’s still a very hard sell, especially if you’re more familiar with Lunn’s black metal work. It’s a good album and an interesting experiment, but it’s also such an oddity in a catalogue of mostly black metal and dark folk that I gotta respect Lunn’s sheer bravado in not just releasing this type of music, but also making it while dealing with emotional distress.
3.5/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell
Laurentian Blue is out now.
