While Vessel’s identity remains a closely guarded secret, we can say for certain he’s someone who’s fallen in and out of love since 2023’s ‘Take Me Back To Eden’. Loss and longing run through ‘Even In Arcadia’ like scarlet threads, providing the structure that marks an otherwise very lo-fi return for the mighty Sleep Token. With legions of fans enthralled by their every move, Sleep Token could easily have taken the easy road and put out anything, safe in the knowledge that even the barest effort would rise high in the charts thanks to their followers. Instead, they’ve repaid our devotion with a smart, well crafted record, as idiosyncratic as ever, that takes their iron fist of a sound and firmly wrap it in a velvet glove.
That’s not to say we’re short on bangers. In fact, it’s reasonable to say that every song has moments that exemplify the cathartic, landslide drops that we love from Sleep Token. Opener ‘Look To Windward’, with its repeated prayer to “halt this eclipse in me” slides from gentle, faltering touches to an avalanche of noise, making it a lovely little introduction to the whole experience. Early single ‘Caramel’, notching up forty million streams in advance of the new record’s release, is far more intriguing though. The closest to a pop love song that Sleep Token have done so far, with Vessel almost spitting bars, it drifts into euphoria and the promise of the slam on the bridge translating into pit magic when they take to Download next month. But always we return to these micro-narratives of love gained and lost: “I thought I got better but maybe I didn’t,” rasps Vessel through layers of regret. Autotune might be a cliche, but when it’s combined with these glacial drops, it just adds a little dash extra sorrow when it’s needed. How the line “go ahead, wrap your arms around me” can sound so hollow on ‘Emergence’ before the band slip into huge, crashing riffs (and a saxophone fadeout) is just another delicious mystery in their myth-making.
While they might have accidentally revealed their human side underneath their capes and cowls, we’re here for the grandiosity, the sound you couldn’t imagine hearing anywhere smaller than a vast stadium. ‘Gethsemane’, spiritual successor to ‘Granite’, tells of the aftermath of a breakup and builds from a blossom-delicate and painfully relatable falsetto intro into sky-shattering riffs. It drags an almost gospel hope into the mud with gritty guitar and this is exactly the kind of epic scale that we expect from Vessel and co. The devotional turn and choral moments on ‘Infinite Baths’ could turn any space in to a cathedral devoted to their artistry, and the way that ‘Dangerous’ twists into an almost architectural scale, a building formed of music, is majestic. We expected nothing less, really, but it’s gratifying to know our faith was well founded.
‘Even In Arcadia’ feels like the moment that Sleep Token have consciously uncoupled themselves to the label of ‘rock band’, if they even wanted to adopt it. It’s more an incredibly dark and far better plotted Bon Iver record, with synths, beats and ethereal piano punctuating light into the night sky. The aforementioned ‘Infinite Baths’ could easily fit into a Zeal And Ardor album if they added a few clanking chains and mentions of murder. It’s this blending of unlikely facets that makes us love Sleep Token, and if we want the crashing midnight moments, we have to also learn to love the pure pop samples that make up ‘Past Self’ or the xylophone innocence that signals the start of ‘Caramel’. Once the dust has settled, ’Even In Arcadia’ will only grow in strength with more listens.
KATE ALLVEY