Under the name Panopticon, the Minnesota artist Austin Lunn records a vast, immersive, personal kind of black metal. Lunn has been releasing music since 2008, and his take on black metal is digressive enough to include elements of folk and country, but it’s also blistering and extreme. Lunn makes epic, cinematic tracks that you can get lost in. He’s got more on the way.

The last Panopticon album, The Scars Of Man On The Once Nameless Wilderness (I And II), came out nearly three years ago. Since then, Lunn has released things like his 2020 EP Beast Rider, an EP intended to raise money for musicians who had been affected by the pandemic. This spring, Panopticon will return at full strength with a new LP called …and again into the light. Talking to No Clean Singing, Lunn says that the album includes contributions from members of the bands Aerial Ruin, Waldgeflüster, Dämmerfarben, and Lactating Yak. It’ll also feature instruments like violin, cello, and pedal steel — things you don’t hear on every black metal record.

The first track that Lunn has shared from …and again into the light is “Know Hope,” a vast and bruising 12-minute colossus that closes the LP. The song doesn’t really have peaks or valleys. Intead, it’s soothingly scorching, like a long bath in too-hot water. As Lunn points out, the track features a sample of Crass member Gee Vaucher talking about her inspirations. Listen below, via No Clean Singing.

…and again into the light doesn’t have a release date yet, but it’s coming this spring on Bindrune Recordings.