Band:	Panopticon
Album:	The Rime Of Memory
Style:	Atmospheric black metal
Release date:	November 2023

01. I Erindringens Høstlige Dysterhet
02. Winter's Ghost
03. Cedar Skeletons
04. An Autumn Storm
05. Enduring The Snow Drought
06. The Blue Against The White

Atmospheric black metal does hit differently when it gets this cold outside and you write reviews with your Christmas sweater on.

Austin Lunn's Panopticon project needs no introduction for fans of atmospheric folk-tinged black metal, being perhaps the best example of the folk side of things being more bluegrass/americana inspired within the entire black metal field. There's more to Panopticon than just this particular blend of styles, from rougher beginnings and the very overlooked comparatively albums like Collapse and Social Disservices, to what can be considered the breakthrough album in 2012's Kentucky one that really hammered the bluegrass/americana part of the sound, but the blend with the atmospheric black metal side got perfected on the following two albums, often considered to be the project's peak, 2014's Roads To The North and 2015's Autumn Eternal. What followed was Lunn breaking apart the two sides of the band's music into separate parts on 2018's The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness before putting them back together on 2021's ...And Again Into the Light.

Though there have been numerous Panopticon albums that stylistically are very reminiscent of The Rime of Memory, the one that feels most relevant here is the preceding one. ...And Again Into the Light had the contextual benefit of being the first album to follow after the band tried to separate their two styles for one release, so it was interesting to see how the songwriting would be affected once this experiment was completed. It feels less interesting to be the second album after that. So let's talk a bit about ...And Again Into the Light first. In musclassia's review of it, they noted that the album takes a bleaker approach that makes the runtime drag a bit, but the album's biggest weakness lies in how the production handles the harsher black metal elements. Having listened to the two side by side, fundamentally these are similar between the two albums, however these complaints feel much more minor on The Rime of Memory.

The production still feels more pronounced in the mellower folk/post-rock section than in the black metal sections, something that can often be the case in albums that blend these two, but unlike the previous album the guitars don't feel as weak and the drums don't feel as off-putting, making the production issue feel less instantly noticeable. There are issues with it though, especially on the vocal side. There are moments in the harsher sections when the vocals feel too muted, but the worst offenders are the Godspeed You! Black Emperor-ish spoken word passages that feel so pushed back in the mix that they feel more like an embellishment of the atmospheric aspect of the album (and on a purely musical level they do sound good) rather than a means of getting a message across. And with an album as intent on sending a message as The Rime of Memory is, that's a very weird choice.

Stylistically, both ...And Again Into the Light and The Rime of Memory have the same building blocks. Atmospheric black metal, folky americana, post-rock. Maybe a touch or two of something else like ambient or shoegaze or doom metal. The quantities themselves may differ slightly, but the way they are arranged also seems to make The Rime of Memory a more engaging listening experience. The album is also structured around very long songs, with four out of the six tracks exceeding ten minutes in runtime. Opening tracks being relegated to being non-metal slow builders and mood setters is pretty much in the atmospheric black metal canon, but even outside the two minute opener, the nearly twenty minutes long "Winter's Ghost" really takes its sweet time with its slow building and mood setting before bursting into black metal, but that's a very patience rewarding process because of how well the emotional catharsis in the way the album flows pays off. It's the kind of album I'd normally criticize for being too long, and maybe in a way it could've benefited from some trimming, but The Rime of Memory is really kind to the time the listener invested in it.

And even outside the Panopticon canon and a reviewer's obsession with contextualizing everything, The Rime of Memory is just such an emotional and cathartic album. Slight mishaps aside, few albums can pull you in and be this generous with you if you give it your patience.