It's rare to witness a band change the course of a genre in real time. Yet we’ve watched Sleep Token rise from the shadows to selling out The O2, cracking the US Billboard charts, and dragging metal – and all its expectations – with them.
Of course, fame brings pressure. Sleep Token’s fourth studio album arrives not just on major label RCA and with even more hype, but with the added weight of scrutiny, especially from fans who saw 2023’s Take Me Back To Eden as their magnum opus. And yet, Even In Arcadia isn’t an album of anthems; it’s a patchwork woven from of introspection, tension and the anxiety of stardom, all stitched together while the spotlight burns. It presents something that’s more commercially aware, yet also more vitriolic, and far more intimate.
That intimacy comes from the lyrics, stripped back and unfiltered, as if the shine of fame has worn thin. Where Take Me Back To Eden cloaked its anguish in myth, Even In Arcadia leans into confession. Caramel glides on a reggaeton pulse with the line ‘I guess that’s what I get for trying to hide in the limelight’, while Damocles is even more brittle as Vessel shrugs, 'I know these chords are boring’, like someone circling writer’s block but too burnt out to fight it.
Infinite Baths goes deepest, though, with a guitar line that recalls Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd’s tribute to founding vocalist Syd Barrett, who parted ways with Floyd when fame began to unravel him.
But if the lyrics turn inward, the music looks out. Sleep Token are masters of genre-splicing, but here the shifts often feel strategic. Provider is full-blown Usher cosplay, and Dangerous is Careless Whisper for the BookTok generation– all low-rider trap beats that hit with more groove than Vessel’s six-pack.
It’s ridiculous, and yet somehow one of the album’s most memorable moments. The results feel dialled-up, even calculated, except on Emergence, where trap pop rhythms, vocoder vocals and hip hop cadences blend into something more fluid and purposeful.
Still, it’s not all slow-burns and soft edges. When Sleep Token go heavy, they go for the throat. There’s no direct successor to a track like Ascensionism, but Look To Windward – a reference to T.S. Elliot’s epic 1922 poem The Waste Land, and the laws of unintended consequences – gives it a damn good run as a spiralling, Ihsahn-adjacent extravaganza that burns through grief and grandeur before crash-landing into a trap beat.
Infinite Baths also vies for epic status, all soft keys and gospel glow, rising through lush, Deftones-like swells before collapsing into the heaviest, most punishing finale the band have ever recorded. The title track is just as expansive, building like thunder through cinematic piano and strings, but instead of delivering the expected blow, it retreats. Maybe that’s the point.
Even In Arcadia won’t win over anyone already rolling their eyes. It’s an intense, flawed and often stunning record that shows Sleep Token laid bare and exhausted, but also brave, ambitious and painfully honest.
It might divide longtime fans, but it will almost certainly expose metal to its biggest audience yet. You don’t have to like Sleep Token. You don’t even have to understand them. But at this point, ignoring them is no longer an option.
Even In Arcadia is out Friday May 9. Read the story of the band's early years in the new issue of Metal Hammer, out now, featuring two exclusive covers. Order your copy here
