What feelings come with an ending? Grief? Gratitude? Hope? As the Laurentian Trilogy comes to a close with Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet,1 the reflections on things passed which each album casts in a different light are at their most poignant. Panopticon turns from personal catharsis (…And Again into the Light) to metaphorical mirroring of individual crisis with that which devastates the natural world (The Rime of Memory), and now the very fabric of every one of us as people—bound inextricably to our experiences and environment. Mourning the loss of a loved one; memories of a people left behind by industrialisation; vanished caribou who once roamed the forests and the trees that grew old before the saw; a losing battle with time; isolation, love, joy. These fragmented, vivid, impressions of The Haunted Heart masterfully draw together an opus as potent musically as it is emotionally, five years almost to the date since it began.
Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet’s conclusiveness is tangible, its every note suffused with nostalgia and closure—even opener, “Woodland Caribou,” feels like a resolution. Drums boil and crash with anguish, tremolos are effervescent with feeling, and strings are more prominent and more stirring than ever before. But even in its finality of reprising themes and devastating climaxes, Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet reveals that everything does not truly end after all. With a chorus of guest vocalists,2 Austin Lunn tells a story of a life coming to a close in chapters that reflect not only on one person’s experiences, but those of a culture and a wilderness extending beyond them. It’s the most immediate Panopticon has ever been: lacking any preamble, moving faster and with assured ardour through every blackened arc, reaching deeper into your soul with every singing string refrain. Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet sees an infusion of characteristic folk, black metal, and magical atmosphere in a way that’s at once so heart-wrenchingly intimate and viscerally overwhelming it can hardly be described as less than perfection.
From the moment it begins, Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet has hold of you, most strikingly because of how breath-catchingly gorgeous it is. Some of the saddest, most profound melodies of Panopticon’s career (“Woodland Caribou,” “Blood and Fur Upon the Melting Snow,” “Ghost Eyes in the Firelight”) combine with some of the wildest (“The Great Silence, Extinct,” “The White Cedars,” “A Culture of Wilderness”). Even the heaviest moments dazzle in their dissonant devastation with mournful urgency (“The Great Silence…,” “A Culture…”). But what takes this beauty and rage into transcendence is how these tides of emotion are so tightly wound together, referencing one another, the refrains of The Laurentian Trilogy, and even all of Panopticon up until this moment. The soft sigh of a violin refrain (“Woodland Caribou”) sobs in precipitating a mid-album climax (“Blood and Fur…”), and the dancing tremolo-string swoops of “The Great Silence…” are mirrored in “Blood and Fur,…” and “The White Cedars.” The shuddering heaviness of “A Culture…” reawakens the gravity of “Moth-Eaten Soul”3 while untamed exuberance (“A Culture…,” “Blood and Fur…”) revives “An Autumn Storm”4 and the spirit of Roads to the North, and flute—accompanied only by the crackling of a fire—brings the acoustic introspection of the trilogy firmly to the forefront (“Lyset”).
But it’s the final act, “Ghost Eyes in the Firelight,” that pulls these threads—and one’s heartstrings—taut. Gracefully drawing in the elements from throughout the trilogy, it then softly and assuredly builds to a conclusion that hums ever more with familiarity. As the shimmering tremolos rise to a steady beat, you realise it’s the central theme of “…And Again into the Light” lifting upwards on their featherlight wings. All the lyrics on Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet sing with poignancy, but in this ascent that poignancy peaks,
The light from the window fades like the winter recently past.
Free of this mortal coil, free at last.
A slight pain in his chest grew as he laid down upon the melting snow.
Gazing upward into the night sky, he closed his eyes to the dark night,
but behind the blackness of his eyelids,
the stars remained
but behind the blackness of his eyelids,
the stars remained
…and again into the light
As cymbals judder and guitars perform a final flourish, the haunting calls of loons signal the completion of this circle, the spilling in of the light to the serenade of violins to a devastating reprise, filling your chest with its warmth and your eyes with tears.5 A more perfect way to end things could not exist. My heart clings longingly to the place evoked by Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet‘s consuming atmosphere and touching humanity. I cry with the empathy of its creator, crying for time gone, for those no longer here, for the lost wilderness, for the empty homes and hearts and the silent forests. But I also cry with a kind of transcendent joy. Because in closing, things begin anew. Just as the final whining strings lead into the beginning of …And Again into the Light, they blur too into that of “Woodland Caribou.” A ring, the renewal of hope. The darkness does not last. The fire will not burn out.
Rating: Iconic
DR: ? | Format Reviewed: Stream
Label: Bindrune Recordings | Nordvis Productions
Websites: Bandcamp | Instagram
Releases Worldwide: May 8th, 2026
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