Levitation Festival is slated for Sept. 10-13 in Austin, and now the full lineup is out. Some acts announced last month include Angine de Poitrine, Molchat Doma, Die Spitz, and Smerz, and today American Football and Bikini Kill were revealed as headliners.
The post Levitation Festival Announces Full 2026 Lineup With Bikini Kill, American Football, Angine de Poitrine, & More appeared first on Stereogum.
With Tales of Othertime, Stormkeep did something genuinely difficult: they released a debut full-length that felt fully formed, rooted in the mid-90s Swedish and Norwegian black metal tradition without being a mere replica of it, and built a fantasy world vivid enough that listeners actually wanted to return. The Denver quintet earned their reputation quickly, and with it came the weight of expectation. The Nocturnes of Iswylm, their second full-length, doesn’t attempt to repeat the formula. It deliberately dismantles it — and the result is the most conceptually ambitious record in the band’s catalog.
Where Tales of Othertime was expansive and scene-setting, rich with long-form atmospheric passages and the moral clarity of high fantasy, The Nocturnes of Iswylm is its photonegative. The world is the same, but the light has shifted. The Seer — the protagonist of the first album, an essentially good figure fighting against darkness — has now become the thing he was fighting. The album is set in the cave, the lowest point of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, where the protagonist must confront what they’ve become. That framing isn’t window dressing. It’s structurally embedded in every compositional decision the band made.
The thematic pivot to vampyric darkness is the album’s most significant departure, and Stormkeep are too self-aware to let it slide into genre posturing. Their Nathaarian — the band’s term for their particular strain of fantasy vampire — isn’t glamorized. The reference points run closer to Nosferatu and the original Hammer films than to Anne Rice’s velvet-curtained decadence: a creature consumed by a desire that destroys rather than seduces, barely in control of its own nature. It’s a portrait of addiction wearing medieval armor. The lyric from “Imperious Sanguine Eroticism” — “Oh Succubus / Spirit of Saturnalia / Cursed Forever / In Waltz with Serpent’s Grip” — captures the dynamic precisely: the erotic pull is immediately subsumed by entrapment. In “Carnal Tapestries of Nailtorn Flesh,” the narrator’s declaration — “This carnal temptation will control me no longer” — reads less like triumph than desperate assertion. The horror on The Nocturnes of Iswylm is internal. The Seer knows what he’s becoming. He simply cannot stop it.
That conceptual weight gives the album a psychological coherence that most symphonic black metal records don’t attempt, let alone achieve. The band stripped out interludes entirely this time — a deliberate choice that transforms the listening experience into an unbroken descent. There is no room to surface. The riff language has expanded well beyond the G minor / D minor axis of Tales of Othertime, with minor seconds and tritones pushing the harmonic vocabulary into more genuinely unsettling territory. The symphonic elements, rather than merely decorating the riffs, now build architecture around them — a distinction that matters, and one made possible by the decision to replace synthesized orchestration with live strings. Violinist, violist, and cellist Andrea Morgan brings a warmth and organic unpredictability to the arrangements that no keyboard patch can replicate.
The production team signals that Stormkeep were playing in serious company. Michael Zech — whose résumé spans Secrets of the Moon, Dark Fortress, and The Ruins of Beverast — understands how to give atmospheric black metal both mass and definition. Mastering by Arthur Rizk, whose work with Blood Incantation and Worm demonstrates fluency in the underground’s more demanding audiophile flank, ensures the record holds up under close listening. The result is a record that breathes even as it tightens around the listener’s throat.
“The Taste of Immortal Blood” establishes these parameters immediately, the symphonics and tremolo runs interlocking with a precision the debut didn’t always maintain at pace. “Imperious Sanguine Eroticism” demonstrates the sharpened songwriting economy — key modulations that earn their place, clean vocal passages handled this time entirely by Otheyn Vermithrax rather than a guest, which is the right call given how personal the lyrical register has become. “Ballad of a Fallen Star” draws from the goth-adjacent atmosphere of Fields of the Nephilim and Dead Can Dance, and in context functions not as a deviation but as the emotional fulcrum the album’s second half needed.
The Nocturnes of Iswylm isn’t Tales of Othertime II, and it’s a stronger statement for refusing to be. The Seer has become the villain, and the album is the richer for it — Stormkeep‘s most fully realized work to date.
“Stormkeep have descended into the cave and returned with something that earns every shadow it casts.”
STORMKEEP is:
Otheyn Vermithrax: Vocals, guitar, keyboards, drums
Apokteino: Guitar
Nebula Husk: Bass
Lord Dahthar: Keyboards
Find Stormkeep Online at:
https://tr.ee/vesperian_stormkeep
US web shop: https://metalblade.indiemerch.com/collections/stormkeep
The post STORMKEEP Embrace the Darkness Within on The Nocturnes of Iswylm – Album Review appeared first on Antihero Magazine.
All Releases Now Available on Bandcamp CRIMSON GLORY Crimson Glory and BraveWords Records announce a free listening party on Bandcamp to celebrate the new album […]
The post BraveWords Records Announce New Releases from CRIMSON GLORY, ALCATRAZZ and BANGALORE CHOIR appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.
Stryper have released a new single titled “I’m Alright (I’m Okay)”, continuing the veteran band’s long-running mix of melodic heavy metal and faith-based themes.
Decades into their career, Stryper are still leaning into the sound that helped establish them in the metal scene while adding modern production touches that fit where the band is today.
Frontman Michael Sweet spoke about the new track, saying: “This one is for the old school metal heads. It’s a little 1985 mixed with a little 1991, with a little 2026 sprinkled on top. It has all the qualities that you’ve come to expect from Stryper, yet it also blends in perfectly with the times we live in. It’s a battle cry to stand strong and persevere no matter what, while believing that you will be alright, you will be okay!”
The single arrives alongside an official lyric video and gives fans another taste of the band’s classic approach built around sharp guitar work, strong melodies, and uplifting lyrical themes.
Following the release of “I’m Alright (I’m Okay)”, Stryper are preparing to head back on tour beginning June 5 in Anaheim, California at the Grove of Anaheim.
The post STRYPER Shares Lyric Video For Newest Single “I’m Alright (I’m Okay)” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to admit that you’ve encountered some lizard people in your life. Maybe they’re not actual lizards, cold-blooded with detachable tails, but simply greasy, soul-sucking humans. That’s what Band To Watch alums Man/Woman/Chainsaw warn us about on their new single “Goddamn, Lizard Man!” The proggy PSA, the latest…
The post Man/Woman/Chainsaw – “Goddamn, Lizard Man!” appeared first on Stereogum.
But does the tree remember horse armor?
The post Carcosa Release New “TAFTTR_DLC” EP, Aaron Matts Of Ten56. Guests appeared first on Theprp.com.
The 24-date run launches in September.
The post Knocked Loose & Denzel Curry To Co-Headline Fall North American Tour, Superheaven & Boundaries Booked To Open appeared first on Theprp.com.
VOWWS is an Australian industrial rock duo based in Los Angeles, California, and they’ll be playing several shows in Europe this year. You can check them out at these upcoming dates. Get your tickets by clicking here.
The post VOWWS reveal selected European shows in 2026 first appeared on FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal.