“We’re selling out shows, we’re climbing the bills, but there’s so much pressure to reach more success”: As one of the UK’s leading bands stop touring, we need to talk about the toxic effect a ruined music industry is having on heavy metal

While She Sleeps onstage in 2023 — While She Sleeps, who’ve just announced a break from touring. (Image credit: Javier Bragado/Redferns)

Earlier this week, Sheffield’s award-winning metalcore band While She Sleeps announced that they would stop touring for the foreseeable future, citing the demand that the music industry puts on artists and the burnout that it leads to. “Everything I ever dreamed of was happening right before my eyes,” they say in seven-minute mini-documentary The Paradox Of Progress. “We’re selling out shows, we’re climbing the bills … but there’s so much pressure to reach more success.”

The members talk about how, since forming 20 years ago, they’ve been stuck in a repeating and ever-busier cycle of album/tour/album/tour, because that’s what’s required when you’re trying to survive and expand your brand. As guitarist Sean Long puts it, “The standard of the industry sets the standard for how much artists need to release. No one’s actually telling you to do it – it’s ’cause everybody else is doing it.” But that grind with no end now has them questioning everything: what’s the point of attaining our dreams when we can’t enjoy them?

As a heavy metal journalist with 10 years’ experience, this is something I’ve sadly seen many times before, and with greater and greater frequency. I remember how sad I was when one of my favourite thrash bands, Sylosis, went on hiatus due to creative fatigue, and when Bleed From Within disappeared for a bit due to backstage figures fucking them over. In 2024, Nightwish swore off touring after the release of their Yesterwynde album, and Devin Townsend announced his own indefinite break from the live arena in May.

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Last year, I interviewed three beloved UK metal bands – Svalbard, Ithaca and Orange Goblin – about why they’d each announced impending break-ups, and the younger two said the pressure of touring is what forced them to breaking point. Ithaca guitarist Sam Chetan-Welsh told me that being on the road was “one of the biggest challenges my marriage faced”, while Svalbard’s Serena Cherry said “we don’t make any money”, despite the four-piece being an international touring entity signed to illustrious label Nuclear Blast.

These are all the symptoms of an obvious cause: the music industry doesn’t have enough spare change going around to make a wish in a well. And, like with any kind of economic crunch, it’s those at the bottom feeling it hardest. While Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests hundreds of millions into military AI tech, his service pays artists a fraction of a penny per stream.

Artists that I’ve spoken to from Devin Townsend to Gwar have all told me that they don’t see any of their touring revenue

This has transformed the industry from an album-orientated model, where record sales and royalties padded pockets, to one where touring is the new money-maker. There’s a reason why musicians like Exodus’ Jack Gibson refer to themselves as “travelling t-shirt salesmen” nowadays, and for obvious reasons, it’s an exhausting way to get by. It’s especially hard in metal: a non-mainstream genre where all the earnings have to be split between multiple band members, and an extensive crew has to be paid.

Also, the computer age has brought the bar for releasing quality music lower than ever. Where, before, bands needed to have at least three members, rehearse incessantly, play as much as they could and get studio time with a decent producer to put a worthwhile album out, anyone can now make professional-sounding music alone in their bedroom. Hundreds if not thousands of new albums flood streaming services a week – and that’s not even counting the shitty AI ones.

That pressure to stand out in a flooded market extends to gigs. More artists are touring, which doesn’t just make buses and other such necessities more expensive, but it means your show needs to be bigger and better – and dearer – to resonate. Artists that I’ve spoken to from Devin Townsend to Gwar have all told me that they don’t see any of their touring revenue, as they pour it all back into their production. While She Sleeps, who had a multi-tier scaffolding rig onstage when I saw them at Alexandra Palace in 2023, are probably in the same boat.

All the while, for the consumer, the big, stadium-calibre shows – System Of A Down at Tottenham, Iron Maiden at West Ham, Linkin Park at Wembley – are getting more frequent and costlier. These must-see spectacles, and the attached surge pricing from ticket companies, are choking people of their disposable income, making them less likely to take a chance on smaller gigs. It feels like a bubble ready to burst.

It should be said, the idea of touring yourself into mental torment is not new. In 1985, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson nearly quit the band in protest, due to more and more dates being added to the already-12-month-long World Slavery trek. Metallica have gone on record multiple times about how they weren’t afforded any time to grieve after Cliff Burton’s death: the effects of that crunch festered for more than a decade, until everything almost fell apart during the St Anger sessions in the early 2000s. The industry should know better by now, with charities like Mind in place so that musicians can open up about their mental health, yet it clearly doesn’t.

Metallica in 1986 — Metallica weren’t afforded the time to grieve for Cliff Burton (far-left) after his death in 1986. (Image credit: Ross Marino/Getty Images)

Compared to most other touring metal acts right now, While She Sleeps are in an enviable position, and the members would probably tell you as much. Fans support them on Patreon in exchange for goodies and behind-the-scenes access, granting them a level of passive income, and they have their own recording studio and HQ that they built themselves. Artists who are trying to make a name for themselves in today’s economy don’t have any of those things, but they have all the same pressures and expenses.

Something needs to change. In fact, a lot of things do. Albums need to be treated as the financially worthy pieces of art that they are, stadium shows shouldn’t cost a concertgoer hundreds-to-thousands and trickle the struggle down to smaller artists, and musicians shouldn’t have to battle this hard for notice, especially against ‘songs’ made by mindless computers. If music persists as it is now, more and more of the bands we treasure will be burnt into stepping away from the stage.

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Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.

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