Band:	Panopticon
Album:	.​.​.​And Again Into The Light
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	May 2021

01. ...And Again Into The Light
02. Dead Loons
03. Rope Burn Exit
04. A Snowless Winter
05. Moth Eaten Soul
06. As Her Golden Laughter Echoes (Reva's Song)
07. The Embers At Dawn [ft. Jan Van Berlekom and Erik Moggridge]
08. Know Hope

With new albums from Dordeduh, Vallendusk and Panopticon, it's been a hell of a weekend for folk-influenced black metal.

It's not necessarily just the style and proximity of release dates that links these bands; all three have developed over largely overlapping timeframes. Yes, Panopticon is a bit older than the others, with the project's self-titled debut album dropping four and five years prior to the first full-lengths from Dordeduh and Vallendusk, respectively; however, in addition to Dar De Duh, 2012 saw the release of Kentucky, arguably Panopticon's breakthrough album. Kentucky acted as a perfect vehicle for sharing Austin Lunn's distinctive combination of black metal with bluegrass and Americana with a wider audience, and this synthesis bore further fruit in the forms of Roads To The North and Autumn Eternal, before Lunn decided to separate the two primary features of Panopticon on the two-disc The Scars Of Man On The Once Nameless Wilderness. With ?And Again Into The Light, Panopticon fuses its sound back together.

Of the different styles, the beginning belongs purely to the folk, as the title track is comprised of acoustic guitar and strings (session musicians Charlie Anderson and Patrick Urban perform the violin and cello, respectively, on this record) alongside Lunn's understated singing. The muted beginning spills over into "Dead Loons", one of four tracks here that break the 10-minute barrier; it's not until the three-minute mark that there's some distortion to deal with. When that distortion does arrive, it comes in the form of sustained chords, with a tonality that is reminiscent of Wayfarer; however, there's a bit of a flatness to the tone compared to Wayfarer - the guitar feels a bit weak.

I find the production in general to be a slight weakness on ?And Again Into The Light; just on "Dead Loons" alone, there's a few things I could point to. Aside from the relative lack of heft to the guitars, the vocals also feel quite buried in the mix when the black metal is unleashed; in contrast, the strings are very high in the mix when they first appear, almost so high that they drown out all the other instruments. One last element of the album's sound that I'm not hugely fond of is the snare tone; when Lunn really gets to blasting (and as it's a Panopticon album, there are a lot of blast beats on ?And Again Into The Light), the snare develops a 'trash can lid' sound that I find slightly offputting. None of these points are a dealbreaker by any means, but considering that production quality is generally something I don't pick up on all that much, it surprised me how many aspects of the record's sound stood out to me.

Putting aside these quibbles about the production, the album's style doesn't hold many surprises; there's an onslaught of blast beats combined with atmos-black riffs and ear-catching melodies courtesy of the strings and guitar. However, in comparison to an album like Autumn Eternal, the tone here is more muted; Lunn has acknowledged that this a darker album, and it comes through quite clearly. A darker direction isn't necessarily new; Lunn arguably wrote his best song, "Rune's Heart", whilst inspired by the difficult birth of his child. However, whilst I hold "Rune's Heart" in very high esteem, I find that across a longer album (and at 71 minutes, ?And Again Into The Light is a long album), the bleaker approach tends to drag when compared with the grandeur of Autumn Eternal and beautiful melodicism of Roads To The North.

Whilst the tone is darker, it's not a grand departure for Lunn. The sound of the black metal here remains partway between blackgaze and the string-infused atmos-black of the likes of Wolves In The Throne Room and (formerly) Abigail Williams. Probably the furthest Panopticon veers away from this, at least in one direction, is the album's most vicious song, "Moth Eaten Soul"; the opening to this song is pure aggressive, almost dissonant black metal, and even when the song slows down and brings in the strings, the metal backdrop remains malicious and shrouded. There's no levity on "Moth Eaten Soul"; as such, the brief bluegrass interlude "As Golden Laughter Echoes" provides welcome respite before the pinnacle of the record arrives in the form of "The Embers At Dawn". Featuring Erik Moggridge (Aerial Ruin) and Winterherz (Waldgeflüster) as guest vocalists, "The Embers At Dawn" is what I was referring to by 'in one direction', as this song spends its first half in the complete opposite direction of "Moth Eaten Soul", conjuring delicate soundscapes with clean singing and acoustic instrumentation; even when the blasting arrives, the serenity of the opening half somewhat carries over courtesy of the string melodies.

Ultimately, if you've liked Panopticon's previous efforts, I would expect you to enjoy ?And Again Into The Light as well. It's overly long and has production issues, and the prolific use of blast beats can be overwhelming, but those are issues that I've had with their previous albums as well. I'd rank it below the stretch of records from Kentucky to Autumn Eternal, but not by a significant margin.