PANOPTICON — Kentucky (review)

Album · 2012 · Atmospheric Black Metal

4.5/5 · 2016-04-30
Vim Fuego

MMA Reviewer's Challenge: May 2016

A panopticon is an interesting concept. Dreamed up by 18th century social reformer and father of modern utilitarian philosophy Jeremy Bentham, a panopticon was initially an idea for a low labour prison. By building a circular prison with a central watch tower, a single guard could potentially supervise hundreds of prisoners unobserved, providing huge savings in staffing. The theory was, prisoners would not know if they were being watched, and therefore had to behave as if they were. No panopticon prisons were ever built to Bentham’s exact instructions, but experiments were conducted with similar constructions. And a strange thing happened. Prisoners went insane.

Inmates hated the panopticon to the point it drove some to mental breakdown. The thought of every single moment of life being under observation, 24 hours a day was just too much, even for hardened criminals. Bentham would have been horrified, because central to human happiness in his philosophy was the experience of pleasure and the lack of pain, including psychological. Many prisons built in a similar style have now been scrapped, but some are still used.

Even some workplaces were operated in this style, as employers found productivity increased, albeit as worker happiness declined. The word panopticon has become synonymous with the invasion of the state into every aspect of life, a lack of privacy for ordinary people, the oppression of workers, and the erosion of civil rights. And this is where “Kentucky” by Panopticon fits in.

This album covers the state of Kentucky from its bloody origins when the Cherokee were ruthlessly and forcibly removed from the forests, through the turbulent and violent times when the coal mining industry destroyed the landscape and humanscape simultaneously, and concludes with a native Kentuckian despairing at the environmental desolation still visited upon his once pristine home.

Although it’s instrumental, “Bernheim Forest in Spring” is hardly the typical atmospheric black metal introduction track. Rather than the “grym, frostbitten” silliness often associated with black metal, it creates an impression of timeless forest covered hills and morning mists, encapsulating the primeval sylvan solitude of Kentucky’s wilds.

The tranquillity is obliterated by the coal blackened sledgehammer of “Bodies Under the Falls”. Man-mountain polymath Austin Lunn, the creator of the initial backwoods beauty is also its destroyer, jarring the listener from any sense of peace of mind with a barrage of crystalline sharp black metal riffs, with the subtle undertone of a flute. This epic track is a telling of the arrival of Europeans in the Appalachian mountains from the point of view of the displaced Cherokee, forever weeping at the destruction of their idyll and the rending of their connection with the land, but taking some solace through killing some of the newly arrived invaders.

Traditional folk song “Come All Ye Coal Miners” provides contrast to the metallic songs once again. It is a call to arms against the coal mining companies which subjugate miners, whose wages and lives were both cheap, and includes a chilling sample where a miner explains both miners and the environment are considered disposable by the mining industry.

“Black Soot and Red Blood” pulls the black metal back a shade, but the subject matter is still brutal. The mining industry was incredibly ruthless and cruel, screwing down miners to subsistence living, whilst crippling and killing men through neglect and lack of safety measures.

Kick men long enough and they will eventually kick back, as the miners of “Bloody Harlan” County did in the 1930s. The miners went on strike repeatedly, demanding better pay and conditions. The mining companies resorted to hired thugs and scab labour. After the Battle of Evarts on the 5th of May, 1931, which saw deputies armed with machine guns take on strikers wielding shotguns, and resulted in four deaths, the governor of Kentucky called in the National Guard to restore order. This incident was one of the inspirations for Florence’s Reece’s protest song “Which Side Are You On”, the next track on the album.

The folk/gospel rendition of “Which Side Are You On” is an example of less being more, with the simplistic melody backed by banjos, voices and a thudding beat, creating images of desperate men holding picket lines against what must have seemed overwhelming odds. “Killing the Giants as They Sleep” collides with the end of the song like a phalanx of deputies smashing into a determined picket.

Leaving the woes of the labour movement behind, “Killing the Giants as They Sleep” picks up on environmental concerns, as generations of mining have desecrated the once pristine landscape. Otherworldly flutes float through the metallic maelstrom of the song. There are ghosts in the music, of men losing their connection with the wilderness, and of forest spirits driven before the relentless destruction of mineral extraction. The song jags viciously between the ethereal and the painfully hyperreal.

“Black Waters” the third folk song used on the album, further stresses the Appalachian desolation, although it is unrecognisable as such. The song drones like a wrecked church organ with a choir of the damned chanting behind it.

The gentle mountain music of the final track “Kentucky” ties up all the loose ends. It leaves the listener thinking about the previous seven tracks, about how humans can be so inhumane and destructive in the pursuit of progress and profit, and how the places people live and work help define them.

The contrasts created between the black metal and bluegrass country elements of this album demonstrate different realities in the same locality, but also reveal the only weakness to this minor masterpiece. Bluegrass music almost always sounds upbeat, even when a song is depicting a melancholic or dark subject. The banjo is an inherently cheerful instrument, and bluegrass violins are hardly sonorous.

This minor quibble aside, “Kentucky” is an album to quieten black metal nay-sayers and genre mixing sceptics. It describes a powerful interconnected story without becoming a full on concept album. The non-metallic elements are executed with skill and conviction, and do not dominate or denigrate the metal. The metal passages are attractive even to those who scoff at black metal’s dogmas and clichéd excesses. This is an all-seeing album for anyone serious about metal.

more than 2 years ago
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Nightfly wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Very insightful piece of writing.

Vim Fuego wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Yeah, it went a bit Jeremy Clarkson (for anyone unfamiliar: motoring journalist notorious for long, rambling car reviews which hit a lot of different issues before dealing with the car in the last 1/3 to 1/4 of the review!)

TheHeavyMetalCat wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Not sure I've ever read a review that went so many extra miles. Nice work.

Vim Fuego wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Can't help the history thing. I have a history degree so it comes as second nature. You should read the lyrics. They're on Metal Archives.

Bosh66 wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Had this album for a couple of years or so. Just dug it out again after reading this as I've not listened to it for a while. Excellent review!

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Great review, I had no idea about the history. It's cool to know the story and history the album is telling, as I didn't really pay attention to any lyrics.