Having given ISIS albums like Celestial and Oceanica few spins (as well as Red Sparrows and Mogwai) in the early aughts – thanks to music geek JonRobertson – I sensed a sea change had occurred within some genres of heavy rock and metal, but it wasn’t until traveling on the A Train late one evening listening to the gradual rhythm section buildup followed by explosive riff-laden release and complex time changes of Panopticon’s second track, “Backlit,” that I realized I was back. By the early 1990s, I had pretty much given up on heavy music since the demise of bands like Metallica with their sudden dedication to pop music accolades, the distasteful hyper-masculinity of heavy music front runners Pantera (although in retrospect much of their music was excellent), and the inorganic tendencies of the nu-metal crossover artists.Īfter living out the 90s in Philadelphia immersed in the city-influenced sounds of acid jazz (later re-dubbed “nu-funk”), King Brit and Josh Wink spinning funk and hip-hop mash-ups around town, and the poetic sounds of urban performers like Ursula Rucker, my return to heavy music didn’t occur until being exposed to something that travelled way beyond the cheesy lyrics, tough guy posturing, and creative decay that metal had become in my mind. I discovered the album (and ISIS) at about the same time as I was forced to read Foucault as a graduate student in New York City. My purpose for taking on the lofty task of discussing this particular album amounts to pure nerdy-fan tribute to the highly significant role that both ISIS and Panopticon have played in the development of my musical tastes over the past ten years. Ten years later, ISIS has re-issued a re-mastered addition of Panopticon complete with some new packaging (including an updated cover), and a 12-page booklet created by ISIS’ bandleader, singer, and guitarist, Aaron Turner. In 2004, the groundbreaking metal band ISIS co-opted Foucault’s interpretation of the objectifying power of Bentham’s invention and the fiction of perpetual surveillance that such technology asserts as the thematic of their album Panopticon. The power that emanates from the panopticon is therefore both visible and unverifiable – visible in that the inmate, patient, or student can always see it and imagine the observation taking place from its heights, yet unverifiable because the subject will never know whether or not he is really being observed. Foucault explains that 19 th century social reformer Jeremy Bentham designed the panopticon to arrange “spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and recognize immediately.” In this way, any individual within the given space can be seen from the panopticon, but does not see his observers. ![]() In his seminal work, Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault describes the panopticon – a tower pierced with windows on top that opens out onto the inner side of a space where observation is necessary, such as a prison, asylum, school or hospital.
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