By Georgia Smith
‘Take Me Back To Eden’, the new third album released in May from the enigmatic, anonymous four-piece Sleep Token, is a genre-defying exploration into loss, release, and the grandiose and pining sentiments of their earlier work; this time showcased in the new and unexpected musical directions that come to define this album.
The album’s opening tracks ‘Chokehold’ and ‘The Summoning’, released first as singles in early January, set the stage for the experimentalism that will follow the tale of loss and new identity that ‘Take Me Back To Eden’ seeks to tell.
Whilst carrying the established aesthetics of the band- the clean melodic vocals from the frontman known as Vessel and the slow builds to heavy breakdowns- these opening tracks begin to suggest that Sleep Token have discovered a new genre-challenging angle of sound. The funky, bass-slapping direction that The Summoning takes is almost unexpected, and yet the adaptability of Vessel’s unmistakable atmospheric vocals carry whatever musical background that the band sets behind them. This funky new sound becomes theirs, slotted seamlessly into their established pairing of melody and metal. Rather than appearing that they are attempting to fit their vision into specific pre-existing boxes, Sleep Token successfully manipulate the edges of the expected to their own artistic ends.
This realization of their musical and almost genre-defying diversity is tangible on this album, with these sudden changes not only into funkier sounds but also the faster, more upbeat and unquestionably catchy ones found in ‘Ascensionism’ and ‘Rain’. The ever-present heavy, dirty breakdowns that fans have come to expect means that tracks like ‘DYWTYLM’, unique for its unusual use of pop-like autotune and lack of heavier sequences, are able to stand alone in this experimentalism without compromising the soul of the album.
Sleep Token have set themselves free on this new release, and so the various expressions of their now well-established defining elements are all the more hard-hitting and effective. The seamless marriage of new ideas and sounds to existing ones means the newness is never jarring, rather feeling like, beneath the surface, they have been here all along.
The contrast of the slow, vocally-focused ballad of ‘Aqua Regia’ and its simple piano backing with the impenetrably harsh vocals and dense guitars of ‘Vore’, heavier than anything on previous albums and with a new inclusion of long harsh vocal sequences, suggests the band are not attempting to find their sound, but rather are expressing a new awareness of their ability to push these angles as far as they can go.
In a sense, these conflicting and yet complimentary musical styles reflect the desperation with which the album- a journey of many twists and turns- attempts to reconcile the shattering loss of love with the new life and identity that Vessel’s lyrics seek to find. The eerie synth of ‘The Apparition’ and the undefinable varieties of unapologetic heaviness, upbeat and catchy choruses and haunting isolated vocals of the album’s longest and titular ‘Take Me Back To Eden’ come together to form the richest musical landscape that Sleep Token have offered so far.
Potentially a newfound confidence with their place in heavy music, potentially simply a means to an artistic end, the unconfined and often formless experience of ‘Take Me Back To Eden’ as a whole feels almost alive, a new exploration into the lyrical concepts set to an innovative, almost incontestably successful musical backdrop.
Ambiguity is a driving force behind this new release, fitting with the anonymous characterization of this masked collective. Deeply metaphorical lyrics go hand in hand with the variety and range of sound that these tracks take, often changing with no preamble or warning. Use of concepts and samples from their earlier works, ‘This Place Will Become Your Tomb’ and ‘Sundowning’, mean that these bold experimental takes are never far from the core ideas that define Sleep Token- lamenting lost love, embracing the impenetrable, the almost desperate expression of emotion carrying the now unmistakable breakdowns and vocals that are, in this latest ‘offering’, (as the band call their work) only bolstered by the exciting and diverse new additions to presentation and sound.
From the outset, ‘Take Me Back To Eden’ demands that Sleep Token are undefined, unpredictable, able to turn in any musical direction within not just an album but the tight confines of a single song, and back again. This sprawling, triumphant offering with its unapologetic heavy metal base and anthemic choruses, carried by its enigmatic and arresting frontman Vessel is an exciting glimpse into the endless and unpredictable future that awaits Sleep Token and their openness to finding it.
- ‘Take Me Back To Eden‘ is out now.
- Sleep Token headline the RADAR festival at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse on Friday 28 July. They also play the Reading Festival on Saturday 26 August and the Leeds Festival the following day. They then play the OVO Arena Wembley on Saturday 16 December.
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