Taking inspiration from some of the founding voices of black metal, Louisville, Kentucky-based musician Austin Lunn formed his one-man project, Panopticon in 2007. Early albums followed in the footsteps of Darkthrone and Emperor, offering lo-fi production and blistering black metal guitars. His lyrics and liner notes brimmed over with politics and ideology. 2009's full-length Collapse tended toward moodier sounds. 2012's Kentucky is now regarded as a classic of extreme music: Lunn married traditional Appalachian music with melodic black metal. He integrated these elements to create an instantly identifiable sound reflected on 2014's Roads to the North and 2015's Autumn Eternal. 2018's The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness offered equal parts black metal and Appalachian folk. Lunn issued the transcendent ...And Again Into the Light in 2021. In 2023, he returned with The Rime of Memory, a somber, haunted offering whose six tracks totaled more than 75 minutes.