Colorado has turned into a goddamn monster factory. Denver has been cranking out some of the most adventurous extreme metal on the planet over the past decade. Blood Incantation tore through death metal and imbued it with cosmic terror. Wayfarer brought black metal to the bloody American frontier. Primitive Man turned despair into a weapon. Stormkeep had always been the odd one in that pack: the fantasy nerds, the dungeon crawlers, the keepers of ancient myths. But The Nocturnes of Iswylm is no heroic quest. This bastard is all evil. The castle walls are split. Cursed is the bloodline. The moon hangs overhead like an executioner's blade. Stormkeep sounds utterly drunk on the collapse.

Where Tales of Othertime was a torchlit ride into wonder, The Nocturnes of Iswylm is being dragged screaming into the crypt. The melodies are there – huge, triumphant, unforgettable – but they are infected now. Everything is soaked in grief, obsession, and the sick feeling that whatever evil is lurking in these songs won before the first note was played. Stormkeep hasn’t given up on fantasy. They have sharpened its teeth and let it feed.

And holy shit, this record is choking. Intentionally. The guitars don't blend into the mix; they scratch at it. The keyboards hover around every riff like ghosts caught in a burning cathedral. The drums were mercilessly pounding. There’s hardly any gap anywhere. Everything is piled and packed and crammed until the album feels like it’s crushing your ribs in its fists. Some people will complain that it is dense. Let 'em. This is not music for comfort. It's a coffin with speakers. It's wet stone, bad air, and the terror that comes when you know the lid over your head isn't opening. Stormkeep doesn’t give you room to breathe because the people in these songs don’t get to breathe either.

That's what makes the record so damn impressive. Underneath all that pressure, all that beautiful ugliness, the songwriting still cuts deep. The symphonic flourishes never feel cheesy. The riffs stick. The melodies haunt. You can hear the DNA of the old masters coursing through these songs, but Stormkeep isn't cosplaying the '90s. This is living, snarling black metal with dirt under its nails and blood on its teeth.

The Nocturnes of Iswylm isn't as immediately lovable as its predecessor. Good. It shouldn't be. This thing gnaws at you. It festers. It presses down harder with every listen until you're either completely consumed by its world or clawing your way back to daylight. Either way, Stormkeep has done something most bands never manage: they've created an album that feels alive—feral, diseased, majestic, and mean as hell. And in a scene already overflowing with killers, that makes The Nocturnes of Iswylm one fucking beast of a record.

It can be unearthed here or wherever the finest slabs of metal are torn out of the rotting earth.