Panopticon (album)

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Professional reviews
Panopticon

Studio album by Isis
Released	October 19, 2004
Recorded	June/July 2004
Genre	Post-metal
Length	57:04
Label	Ipecac
Producer(s)	Isis, Matt Bayles
All Music Guide link Pitchfork Media (8.4/10) link Piero Scaruffi (7/10) link Transform Online link
Isis chronology
Live.01 (2004)	Panopticon (2004)	Live.02 (2004)

Panopticon is Isis' sixth solo release and third full length. By this point, the band had discovered and refined its own genre-defying sound, and as a result, this album is consistent and dynamic throughout. Steering away from the sample-laden, tightly interwoven atmospherics of their earlier full lengths and focusing their ideas into specific, melody-driven arrangements, Isis instead have created a more cohesive set of songs, a contrast to their earlier approach of tying it all together sonically using the aforementioned sampling techniques. As one reviewer notes, "Panopticon is a little like early Black Sabbath crossed with the disorienting psychedelia of early-Nineties shoegazers My Bloody Valentine".^[1] The album is considered a prime example of the fledgling genre of post-metal; one which Isis have an almost complete monopoly regarding.

The album's title derives from philosopher Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison ideal; the album artwork shows an almost isometric aerial photograph of a city, reinforcing the notion of "being watched", or omniscience. This reintroduces the tower theme of past releases through convention; the center of the circular panopticon was designed either for a lone guard or a central tower, with which the surrounding cells/rooms/etc. are governed. The tower links to a major theme of Celestial, which also links to a female character (as featured in the story of Oceanic). Note, however, that the themes and their connections are merely conjecture, and are open to interpretation.