This is a rather unusual release that Kostas Panagioutou offers under the historical moniker Pantheist: it is in fact a track of around 27 minutes entitled Fthagn-Nagh and composed to serve as the soundtrack for the eponymous level of the video game Quake. The class of the musician involved, who is aided in the realisation by two other current members of the Pantheist line-up, Jeremy Lewis and Matt Strangis, makes this relatively short and seemingly sui generis work something quite valuable. Fthagn-Nagh has nothing to do with either the funeral or the progressive doom that Kostas with his band has been proposing over the years, but it is, fundamentally, an atmospheric ambient track that always retains dark, solemn and menacing. As an alternative to listening to the track in its recording studio version, the demo version of the video in which the music is associated with the game, including the audio with the gunshots, is also of some interest, and I have to say that, trying to identify myself with the player, a background sound of such workmanship constitutes an element that encreases attention and concentration. Fthagn-Nagh is something that neither adds to nor detracts from Pantheist‘s journey, but it is undoubtedly a very well-crafted diversion of a certain value, if one contextualizes it on the purpose of its realisation.

2022 – Independent