PANOPTICON — Kentucky (review)

Album · 2012 · Atmospheric Black Metal

2/5 · 2016-05-01
aglasshouse

MMA Reviewer's Challenge: May 2016

There are very few albums that manage to forge metal and other strange genres, and even fewer that do it well. In this case the said strange genre is bluegrass. Unfortunately these two aren't the most compatible- granted, it could be possible to be able to pull off such a blend, but Panopticon trips up. At least in a certain sense.

To call Kentucky a "bluegrass-metal" album would be misleading. The band does not play bluegrass material at the same time as the full on black metal. This could mostly be due to it being, well, black metal and bluegrass being, well bluegrass. Bluegrass isn't a genre that is able to blast you with any major volume, instead tending to stay pretty tranquil. Black metal does the opposite, and in Panopticon's case, relies heavily on that extreme magnitude to hit you as hard as possible to leave an affect. Because of this volume difference the two styles are practically unable to play at the same time. So instead, Panopticon filled the album with black metal songs and bluegrass songs, which in my opinion makes it a whole lot less interesting that I previously expected it to be. The only real time the album actually turns full black metal is on the long and somewhat uninteresting epics. Therefore the album comes across as a bluegrass band playing some metal.

In this case, I'll look at it from a bluegrass perspective, and it's mediocre. It's nothing to scoff at per-say; Panopticon utilizes those classic toe-tapping beats to drive things that are very typical of archetypal bluegrass (EDIT: The songs themselves are apparently covers of songs from the 30's. This means that these archetypes are excusable to a certain extent, but that also means that Lunn didn't completely write original bluegrass material). Not much is brought new to the end table, and leaves not much impact on me. The metal is pretty alright though, speaking as a non-fan of black metal I still find it impressive that the one-man group can still pull of some okay metal spectacles in the album.

Kentucky was a disappointing album with lackluster levels of effort. If you are interested in a gimmick like this, be prepared that the experience may not be what you think it will be. Yet I do still say that you should check it out when you get a chance.

more than 2 years ago
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Nightfly wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Tend to agree with you for the most part and wasn't blown away myself though some of the black metal tracks were competent enough.

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Great review, while I do enjoy some of the folk songs, I agree for the most part.

aglasshouse wrote:

more than 2 years ago

But I do thank you for the information- I wasn't aware of that when I first wrote it. I'll add that in as a small side-note.

aglasshouse wrote:

more than 2 years ago

If the said songs that were covers from the 30's I can excuse because they spawned many of the cliches prominent in modern bluegrass instead of instigating them. Still doesn't excuse the album very much for me though.

TheHeavyMetalCat wrote:

more than 2 years ago

"But it's obvious that there is zero creativity put into this bluegrass."

Well the two main bluegrass tracks here are actually covers, so if you've got an issue with their creativity it's with the original writers from the 1930's.