The wilderness of sound: Panopticon and Sunken at The Dome, London

There’s a specific kind of magic that happens when the sound of outdoors meets the concrete of a city like London. On a Thursday night at The Dome, that magic took the form of the “Laurentian Echoes” tour. With a lineup featuring the Danish masters Sunken and the much-anticipated return of Panopticon, the evening felt less like a gig and more like a collective pilgrimage. There is truly nothing better than starting a long weekend with a show that sets such a high precedent.

Panopticon is a rare sight—not just because they’ve traveled from the US, but because their performance is something that simply cannot be matched. Sunken couldn’t have been a better choice to set the stage; both bands mesmerized the crowd, and the night felt like a true baptism of the soul.

Sunken

1. Din røst malede farver i luften
2. Foragt
3. Dødslængsel
4. Når livet går på hæld

The room was already thick with smoke when the Sunken logo lit up the backdrop at 20:00. They proved immediately why they are leaders of the new atmospheric wave. Their set was a masterclass in light and shade: one moment you’re lost in a shoegaze-inspired haze, and the next, the drums are beating you into the floorboards.

There’s a grandeur to their sadness that fills a room of The Dome perfectly. Over their 40-minute set, the slow, deliberate dynamics of the band combined with the dense fog, set a somber tone. I personally loved the choice of their singer, Martin, to perform much of the set without facing the crowd. That avoidance of eye contact made the performance feel deeply intimate, as if we were peering into a private ritual. As they moved through tracks like “Foragt” and “Dødslængsel,” it felt like a spiritual preparation for the storm to come.

Photo: Peterson Marti.

Panopticon

1. Winter’s Ghost Part II: Hjemløs
2. Dead Loons
3. The Great Silence, Extinct
4. Blood and Fur upon the Melting Snow
5. The Blue Against the White
6. Woodland Caribou
7. Into the North Woods

That same sense of intimacy remained when Panopticon stepped onto the stage. Some bands shrink when pulled out of the studio and into the real world, but not with them. Under this name, Austin Lunn has spent nearly two decades constructing some of the most emotionally vast black metal in the American underground. At The Dome, Lunn proved that this music doesn’t just survive the live setting—it expands.

The crowd was already dense and silent by the time the lights dimmed. It wasn’t the usual restless, electric buzz of a metal show, but something closer to a collective held breath. The band took the stage without ceremony and immediately erupted into the cascading tremolo and blasts of “Winter’s Ghost Part II: Hjemløs.”

What makes Panopticon extraordinary is the music contrast. The black metal fury—the howling vocals and walls of overdriven guitar—regularly gives way to passages of genuine tenderness. The room would shift from a seething mass to a congregation of people visibly moved within the space of sixty seconds.

The set was incredibly tight, with almost no breaks, moving relentlessly from the ferocity of “Dead Loons” to the epic scale of “The Blue Against the White.” The musicianship was so precise it felt like a parallel reality; the band managed to make the venue feel as vast as a mountain range. There were no over-the-top stage productions—just raw, elemental force. By the time the final notes of “Into the North Woods” faded, everyone stood in a stunned, heavy silence, almost questioning if that could truly be the end of it. Panopticon remains a performance of sincerity that simply cannot be matched.

Photo: Peterson Marti.