The English rock band Sleep Token has plenty going for them to capture the public’s imagination: a distinctive musical sound, an internal mythology as a “cult of the god Sleep,” their hooded appearance at live shows, and, of course, their enigmatic anonymity.
Yet, after listening to their new album, Even in Arcadia, multiple times in hopes of unraveling the mystery that is Sleep Token, I’ve come to a conclusion: there’s not much mystery to uncover. The band is more style than substance.
It’s a case of overcomplicating things to make them seem deeper than they actually are. In Sleep Token’s music, this manifests in every song following a similar formula: they introduce, abruptly and almost randomly, one new section after another. The results are uneven and, more often than not, feel like failed musical experiments.
These sections generally carry a generic sound—pop, metal, trap, rap, and just about every other genre—each marked by an unsuccessful stab at musicality that only highlights the band’s immaturity and ineptitude as songwriters. The same goes for the lyrics, which often veer dangerously close to cheesy teenage love ballads, delivered with vocal melodies reminiscent of the emo scene or bands like Coldplay or Imagine Dragons.
This mishmash of random musical parts and generic sounds reaches its peak in the track Caramel where the band leans into a typical reggaeton rhythm, over which lead-singer Vessel sings a romantic lyric, urging his love interest to “stick to him like caramel.”
I’ll admit there are moments on the album that I enjoy, but they quickly let me down. There’s never a sense of developing the musical theme at hand; instead, the band abruptly jumps to a new idea that isn’t necessarily good or musically coherent with what came before. It all circles back to the same tired, repetitive formula, which I suspect captivates some fans more because of the band’s projected mystique than any actual musical merit.
I genuinely don’t know who this music is meant for. An “artsy” crowd? Metalheads? Emo kids? People with unstable minds who resonate with the jarring, incoherent shifts in musical styles within each song? In their attempt to cover all bases, Sleep Token fail to dive deep into anything.
As Pitchfork notes in their review of Even in Arcadia: “Sleep Token’s major-label debut mostly offers sanitized pop-rap with all the sexed-up verve of Droopy the dog. Their bumbling composite of generic pop and trendy metalcore is both schmaltzy and dull: a vacant wasteland where joy, excitement, and intrigue—sensations that all good metal and pop should evoke—go to die.”
Sputnik, meanwhile, puts it this way: “In spite of its hyper-plastic production, this record exposes Sleep Token’s incompetence to an unprecedented degree. Even in Arcadia is what I imagine a hookless Adele song would sound like. Sleep Token do not know how to write an engaging song with or without relying on sudden genre shifts.” They add: “Sleep Token have conclusively proven themselves to be wholly incompetent songwriters and everything here is almost offensively boring.”
For my part, I conclude that, clocking in at nearly an hour, listening to Even in Arcadia is a tiring and unrewarding commitment. I can’t recommend it. Even if you’re trying to understand why Sleep Token has headlined major rock festivals, you’re unlikely to find any musical satisfaction in this album. Give it a pass.
