Northern Light
The Making of Panopticon’s Autumn Eternal

Induct a Panopticon album into the Hall of Fame, they said. Pick the best one of the bunch, they said. You know, the most impactful record, the most famous one, the one that really stands out from the pack. Sure. Easy.

Austin Lunn’s long-running Americana-infused black metal project has, of course, produced several masterpieces deserving of such attention. But consider a good faith attempt to separate those albums into eras by topic. The man wrote, arranged, recorded and released almost five hours of high-quality music in the span of only four years. How cleanly do you imagine these ideas could be extricated from each other? Lunn has even specifically stated that the music for two very different records—Kentucky and Social Disservices—took shape at the exact same time. And this was before Kentucky became the first entry of an eventual trilogy that helped Lunn understand and express his journey from dedicated southerner to unabashed northman. The music on each album in the trilogy nods to different influences and taps different emotional centers, but none would be complete without locking arms with the other two.

Which brings us to 2015’s final word on that period of Lunn’s life: Autumn Eternal. The years leading to the album’s creation can be accurately characterized by upheaval. Lunn had spent years in social work jobs that took a significant toll on his own well-being, and in searching for a way out, he was invited to apprentice at a Norwegian brewery. While his wife, Bekah, was pregnant with their first child, they briefly moved to Drammen, Norway before returning to Louisville, KY only long enough to pack for a move to Minnesota and start a brewing business with Bekah’s brother. Being transplanted can only be accomplished by first being uprooted, and the disorientation Lunn felt during this process was equaled only by the wave of acceptance he eventually experienced and wrote about with Autumn Eternal.

Autumn Eternal inhabits a transitional moment, a blend of Lunn’s former self and the person he was striving, even then, to become. Sonically, the album finds a somewhat neutral middle ground, and bittersweet beauty blooms where that soil is the richest. It derives its power from newly forged friendships, but also from older relationships that were strengthened and, in some sadder cases, sundered. It celebrates Lunn’s new adventures into family life and into a wilderness that somehow felt almost immediately familiar. And through his process of examining these parts of his own personal evolution, he provides us with the poetry—and the pounding, monstrous riffs—to better appreciate the directions our own lives have taken.

We cannot pretend that Autumn Eternal soars singularly above Lunn’s already large and ever-growing catalog, but we are proud to select it as a totem of sorts, an outstanding collection of songs around which we can rally support for Lunn’s devastating musical legacy. Throw wide the doors of the Hall, and set the standing oaks ablaze.

Need more classic Panopticon? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the personnel who performed on Autumn Eternal, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.

The post Pantopticon – Autumn Eternal appeared first on Decibel Magazine.