Review by JD on January 11, 2014.

I remember reviewing Sleeper’s Guilt’s self-titled EP a while ago. I clearly remember not being so taken by them, and their sound. Combining too much keyboard use with a lack of heaviness – the results was underwhelming at best. With their newest release now ready for me to review we shall see if they have progressed in the way I heard underneath all of the fluff that was being presented.

This band from Luxemburg has gone through a bit of a change mainly with their style. The progressive metal is still there at times, but there is this explosion of heaviness that has been upped to a massive level while using the keyboards to the right effect without overloading like they had done on their EP. Now being sort of melodic death metal with shades of black and even thrash added in. The groove metal they had was long gone to an early grave. Tight and powerful, this band has found their niche.

Impressive is the CD’s starting track and the title of the album. Starting with haunting piano that spins an eerie aura, it soon falls into a breath-taking vortex of brutality of a mixture of Cradle Of Filth/Children Of Bodom style with near Death like vocals added in. Other tracks such as "Slave" and "Echoes Of My Silence" are such an advancement in their power and writing, showing off that un shown part of their explosiveness – but the title track still is the most powerful one on the album.

This was the album I suspected they could do, rather than the somewhat of a disappointed self-titled EP released a year or two ago. Sleeper’s Guilt now has found their sound, and now the world needs to hear it. I do not think they took my advice in the least. Metal evolution took care of that. The metal world never thought Darwin was talking about metal, perhaps he just saw into the future and never knew he was doing that for global metal.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9.5
Atmosphere: 9
Production: 9
Originality: 9
Overall: 9

Rating: 9.1 out of 10

Review by Michael on June 11, 2026.

Well, I haven't seen such an ugly cover for a long time, I guess (but at least it's not AI shit and the girl on the grim, sort of horny looking dragon has some nice boobs).

But what lies beyond this, physically the second full-length of Stormkeep called "The Nocturnes Of Iswylm", is some really amazing symphonic black metal stuff.

Their first EP "Galdrum" was already a very cool piece of music and its predecessor "Tales Of Othertime" another cool surprise, is this another giant leap forward in the discography of the Americans?

Keeping the atmospheric black metal clearly in the foreground, you can also recognize a lot of heavy metal influences in their songs. Especially in the opener "The Taste Of Immortal Blood" are a lot of other influences such as Blind Guardian back to their "Tales From The Twilight World"-era. The clear vocals and the catchy choruses are pretty much influenced by the Germans which doesn't mean that it doesn't fit into the whole. It is more an enrichment in the stylistic diversity Stormkeep show here.

But let us come back to the black metal influences a little bit more. Were there already some symphonic stuff on the previous albums, "The Nocturnes Of Iswylm" tops all this. Actually there are so many influences such as old Dimmu Borgir, Limbonic Art, Emperor or Old Mans Child (especially the harsh vocals remind a lot of them in the 90s) which makes the album a feast for everybody who still loves the old symphonic stuff from the mid-90s.

With the aforementioned heavy metal influences comes out a super catchy black metal album with a lot of surprises in the seven compositions. It has a great range from softer passages to furious black metal outbursts but still is quite focused in itself. Nothing appears to be a leftover or something that was baked only half-hearted.

This is quite remarkable because the songs have a running time range from circa five minutes up to almost ten minutes – we all know that there might be some lengths in this case. To be honest, the songs don't appear to be so long while listening to them. They are quite diverse and also very entertaining.

Also the production is quite tight and powerful, sometimes the drums sound a little bit too loud but that's something that can be put aside to find the fault with something on that album. Also, if you have in mind, that Otheyn Vermithrax (vocals, drums, keyboards, guitars) is nobody else than the Blood Incantation drummer Isaak Faulk, this might explain that focus.

After Worm's "Necropalace" this one is another monolithic release in the symphonic black metal scene in 2026 and I guess that the band will gain some new fans with this output.

Rating: 9 out of 10 horny dragons