An underground gem from The End Records, Sleepless are a duo from Isreal that plays captivating music that breathes with a stillness and evolution remarkable to behold. Neither true metal, new age, or anything in between, I assume Sleepless prefer to not be classified and desires to be heard. For one, the music should be followed as if sight reading a score, the quiet of your mental thoughts helps to savor the sound’s evolution and design. Each song transverses your thoughts with a patient melody, overstepping pleasing accidents as if as a tourist in paradise ignoring tourist traps and con artists peddling on the street. These accidents, such a sudden electric guitar, milky smooth jazz horns, or a warbling gutteral of perhaps mishappen form would in other instances be alarming. And in the deepest and darkest of black and death metal, these would be quite expected. In Sleepless, I could not imagine these elements out of place for critical minds yet Sleepless’ music would quite bore the fans of death and brutal black metal. So to compare yet not clearly show any direct similarities, Sleepless has the unique qualities of distincivley creative bands who forsake trends and themes, such as Maudlin of the Well and The Summoning, who despite their image are quite the expressive purveyors of the deep art of humanity’s abstractions and mysteries, all without the frills and maudlin thrills – a surprise find and will be one of my top albums of the year.

Score 84/100

/author/ Alzn