Panopticon - Collapse

Aquarius Records says...

We get a lot of weird black metal here, that is after all some of our favorite stuff, but this may just be the first disc we've gotten from an anarcho vegan pagan black metal band! We've gotten a few cd-r's from this Kentucky based one man black metal band over the last little while but have been waiting patiently for a proper full length, that we could get enough of to list, and this, Collapse, is it.
And it was well worth the wait, a crushing, expansive, super varied chunk of crusty outsider black metal. Rife with news samples, killer mathy and not typically black metal drumming, spidery guitars wrapped around the usual buzz drenched riffage, the sound not just grim and buzzy, but epic and majestic and melodic. The first song is nearly 16 minutes long, and shifts through more parts and moods than most black metal full lengths. The opening 5 minutes is all intro, or seems it, a lilting minor key drift in the beginning, a pounding blackened buzz later, all underpinning depressive newscasts, before the song really explodes, literally almost, as the blasting and buzzing and pounding is interspersed with recordings of gunshots and explosions, perfectly tangled up with the music so it's difficult to tell what's drumming, and what are reports from tanks and guns, pretty effective, and noisy and chaotic, the song shifts gears a few more times, from doomy plod, to furious blast, to stripped down bluegrass, pretty sure that's a banjo, maybe even some slide guitar, but weirdly haunting and twangy, and somehow it doesn't sound out of place at all.
The second track is another 15 minute epic, which begins as many metal tracks do with the sound or thunder and rainfall, before more acoustic guitar joins in, still more slide, very twangy as well, then the drums come in, and some chimes or bells, a strange combination, loping and folky and darkly mysterious, it's not until nearly halfway in before the track explodes in another frenzy of black buzz, croaked vox, frenzied riffage, blasting drums, building to a super noisy coda, before an outro made up entirely of insect buzz.
After another 10 minute blowout, equal parts menacing majestic pagan blackness and abstract drifting folkiness, comes the strangely melodic final track, all hand drums, bongos maybe, almost jaunty guitar melodies, hushed whispered vocals, minimal, but strangely distorted drums, all wound around a stomping murky insistent doomfolk outro.
Needless to say, way recommend, an exciting new variant of the ever evolving sound of black metal, one we definitely never expected, but are digging big time.


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