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Panopticon / When Bitter Spring Sleeps > Panopticon / When Bitter Spring Sleeps > Reviews > Thumbman
Panopticon / When Bitter Spring Sleeps - Panopticon / When Bitter Spring Sleeps

Umpteenth Example of Overshadowing - 70%

Thumbman, October 24th, 2017

Splits have long been a staple of the Panopticon discography, but prior to the outstanding split with Skagos, Lunn had a habit of greatly overshadowing the band he teamed up with. Although When Bitter Springs Sleep do have their moments here, the gap in quality is pretty damn glaring. Panopticon's material represents half of the On the Subject of Mortality compilation, which Lunn considers a proper Panopticon album. While the production does slightly hinder the sound he's going for (a problem he later fixed with the excellent Revisions of the Past remaster), the Panopticon side is rife with experimentation, boasting shades of folk, post and even melodeath. Bitter Springs also like to keep things varied, and they're a bit of a mixed bag. While the bookend tracks of their side are both reasonably good, the 11 minute middle track is an unmitigated disaster. Panopticon certainly win the day.

Panopticon's side starts with “Living in the Shadow of the Valley of Death”, which is easily one of the coolest songs to spring from Lunn's vast imagination. The song possesses a strong narrative flow, and is probably the least lame integration of melodeath into black metal I've ever seen. Most of his influence seems to be gleaned from early At The Gates, which is as good a source as any. While the flow, the folky transition section and the atmosphere are all highlights, it's really the melodicism that makes it so enrapturing. A big part of the genius of Lunn is that he has a killer knack for making things that would never work in theory sound jaw-droppingly awesome. While the other two songs don't have a chance of outdoing “Valley of Death”, they hold their own. “Living Eulogy” is an excellent atmospheric black metal song imbued with wondrous subtle melody. “To Make an Idol of our Fear and Call it God” dives headfirst into post-black waters. Foreign language samples loom over the ebb and flow of blissed-out corridors of resonant noise.

I really hate to continue the track-by-track, but each band only has three songs and they're all pretty different from each other. For When Bitter Spring Sleeps, “Flames that Taste the Rain” is fairly good before it recedes to useless rain noises. It kinda sounds as if classic Darthrone went balls deep into Cascadian black metal. The raw waves of frigid tremolo are bolstered by surprisingly pretty atmospherics, with really cool clean bellows occasionally joining the fray. “We Cower in the Storm of Her Retribution” is, by all acounts, just dreadfully fucking awful. It starts with nature noises, because of course it does, which are soon joined by a lazily plucked cleanish guitar which the dude proceeds to whisper and make histrionic half-rasps over. The rest of the track oscillates between this and really awful bedroom Mayhem worship. He even tries to emulate Attlia's trademark howls off of the first Mayhem album at one point and he just sounds fucking comical in his attempts. Oh yeah, and of course there's nature sounds running underneath the music the whole time. Who didn't see that coming? For the final song, Bitter Springs manage to right the ship a bit with their cover of “All Things Rise” from a band called Arrowwood. I checked the original and it's a really cool neo-folk offering with hauntingly beautiful female vocals. For their interpretation, it kind of feels like a blackened aesthetic draped over a driving post-punk foundation. The clean vocals are really well done and the whole thing goes over very well. A pretty cool silver lining to the dreadful previous 11 minutes the listener is forced to suffer through.

All in all, while Panopticon's side is pretty awesome, I wouldn't seek out this spit. If you just listen to the recently remastered version of On the Subject of Mortality instead, you'll have a far better time. While the first Bitter Springs song is more or less worthwhile and their cover is really cool, the 11 minute dud completely ruins their side of the split. And they really overdo it in general with the nature noises. I do have somewhat of a soft spot for nature-oriented black metal, but their extensive use of forest sounds just comes off as incredibly contrived. “Living in the Shadow of the Valley of Death” is an essential song in the Panopticon discography and Lunn's two other songs are quite worthwhile, but you don't have to hear them here.