Sleep Token returns with more of an R&B diffusion while giving the finger to the metal purists with their music. Fame seems to be tugging at their soul, and they’re escaping into the abyss of Sleep for answers.
We were asked to worship. We did. Sleep Token seems to have taken the world by storm, with their music and anonymity. Not only has it been the reason for their meteoric rise along with their unique genre-blending music, now it seems to have clung to them, and they don’t really like what fame brings with it. It is part acceptance, part loathing, and the continued worship to the fictional deity Sleep that they have extracted in their 4th LP. This one is called Even in Arcadia.
From Sundowning to now, Sleep Token have garnered a whole new legion of fans. Let’s be honest, the band has a legion of fans that is beyond anything a metal band outside Metallica has never experienced. They are royalty without a name, a name without a face and a swirling compound of emotions that makes you feel pain, pity and rage only a Vessel would. So let’s turn to him and ask.
What you’re listening to is strange. Without doubt, Take Me Back to Eden was their best work for many reasons. They were able to shut down doubters with their complex compositions. In the meantime, they were constructing instrumental ingenuity and lyrical complexity many people didn’t dare to do. Why? They presume the audience is dumb. Not Sleep Token. Well, at least not till now.
You can hear the band’s exhaustion of being catapulted at lightspeed through social media, real-life stalking and performance commitments. This is the same band that sold out O2 in 10 minutes. They have a reputation to hold up, and sometimes–if not most, it isn’t a great thing.
So what seems to have happened is something along these lines. Vessel has sat at home, lamenting at his state of fame without a face. His internal fissures rise as music that can technically be “discordant chords on repeat”, like he says. He feels the pressure, prying eyes always trying to take the mask off him–so that judgement can begin about him being another mortal and not an entity composing music.
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Even in Arcadia has some great tracks, and it doesn’t as well. The band seems to be included in acoustic ballads that envelope themselves in simple trap beats and echoing ambient chords. Helplessly, I, II, III and IV watch on as Vessel battles an exhaustion that might also speculate to him quitting the band.
Whatever the version of this band is, it is always evolving. Ghost runs you through a chronological series of time. If Papa Emeritus dies on the last performance on stage, a new Pope is beckoned. With Vessel, he is one man trying to voice his devotion, life’s complexities and his own battles with mental health. It can never be a conversation, he is forced to make it a work of art. And art, more often than not, is flawed.
This would never be a problem. Songs like Provider, Damocles and Past Self are all dependent on Vessel’s performance. It is brilliant, in-depth singing, but the lustre of the band is receded. They are playing music, but they seem to be in a position to appease a crowd that doesn’t exist. Sleep Token was never gaining traction because they could play music well, millions do that. They were different, and they really developed their style with 100s of artists they might have loved and grown up with.
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Forget transitions. Vessel and Co. are here to evolve a sound that preoccupies the Spotify “hot-ify” for the kind of music that can cover all genres. Are they heavy? Oh, yes. There’s no doubt about it. Sleep Token know that’s a zone they can cover–so you hear it in moments like Infinite Baths and the opening Look to Windward. When you hear him whisper, you know it might be coming in like an avalanche. Look on, you don’t know how hard it’s going to land.
There are also songs like Past Self that fit the theme, but not the aesthetic. This is also what Sleep Token are known for, to disrupt flow to incite thought. Do they do it well? It depends. The album could have had a much deeper textural gauge, especially when they have shown it to us through This Place Will Become Your Tomb and Take Me Back to Eden. You will be immersed in the album to think, to perhaps empathise with what the band might be going through with their lives. They are world renowned, can get everything and anything they’d want. Yet, there is a battle in their mind that they’re trying to win, and perhaps that meditative coma into Sleep is what they’re waiting for.
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Self professed metalhead, moderately well read. If the music has soul, it's whole to me. The fact that my bio could have ended on a rhyme and doesn't should tell you a lot about my personality.
