Arguably the bleakest and most DSBM-style album in the Panopticon catalogue, Social Disservices as the album title as well as the names of the songs themselves so obviously imply serves as Austin's critique on the foster system and other social services (by his definition from the more corrupt, christian strain), which I understand he himself worked in for six years. While to me most of Panopticon's records have a very kind of soaring, beautiful nature-esque theme, this record is definitely a bit of a detour with its very cocophonous, depressing and hopeless atmosphere enhanced by the production as well as its incorporation of violins, dramatic, sad lead guitars and beautiful, haunting background vocals. Its definitely not the best produced album from Panopticon and Austin did eventually end up remastering this entire record for his Revisions Of The Past project, citing lack of experience with equipment and as a producer to be a detriment to the sound of the final project. While I'm not going to argue about how well or not the record ended up in its original version with the man who birthed it himself, I personally don't mind it too much as I still find Social Disservices to be a very evocative and moody black metal record with a lot emotional potency which to me is enough to make up for whatever shortcomings it might have on a technical level, and I honestly find the raw, more lo-fi production to work pretty well. I know this record isn't very popular among fans, but its one of my personal favourite Panopticon LP's, and surely one that is a solid addition to the Austin Lunn canon.
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