Why I’m Breaking Up With Sleep Token, Part 2
Or: He Knows These Chords are Boring
Table of Contents:
In Part 1 of my essay on Sleep Token, I outlined how their first album, Sundowning, introduced the techniques for which they would become known. Their music is genre-fluid, generally consisting of vocally-driven synth ballads often supported by trap-style drums that blossom into metal instrumentals providing the musical climax. They have a unique, if divisive lead vocalist who crafts a compelling fictional world through his lyrics, detailing a lurid love triangle between his patron deity, Sleep, and unnamed women. This story arc would see its conclusion on their third album, Take Me Back to Eden. These compelling elements became more pronounced over the course of their subsequent albums, with their third release bringing them viral popularity not seen from a metal band since Metallica exploded onto the scene in the mid-90s. Now, at the height of their popularity, they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. With the previous story arc completed, Sleep Token had a blank slate, and were poised to release a record that could re-define metal for the 2020s and provide a gateway to the genre for millions.
Instead, what we got was…mostly not a metal album. What we got was a confused, cynical cash-grab that gestures towards expanding the band’s progressive metal influences, but mostly consists of milquetoast attempts at 2000’s-era R&B, 2010’s-era trap rap, and even reggaeton in an attempt to garner even broader appeal. Lyrically, the laser focus of the musico-narrative concept in Sundowning is absent as the band relegates Sleep to a side character in a story that largely revolves around Vessel—the man, not the character—wrestling with the price of fame. What we find beneath Vessel’s mask is that the Metal King has no clothes: without the fictional framework he carefully crafted for 8 years, his attempts at articulating his genuine thoughts and feelings feel devoid of gravitas, and are heavily peppered with pretentious references to mythology, religion, and poetry. It is, as is so prevalent nowadays, the aesthetic of intellectualism rather than the genuine article. He frequently vacillates between self-deification, self-pity, and bargaining with his audience for their loyalty and not their ire. It is unnervingly messy and perhaps too honest in some places, while deeply performative in others.
As a listening experience, Even in Arcadia feels like a severely creatively confused work attempting to please Sleep Token’s fans, past, present, and future. However, I was surprised to find that the lyrics, while significantly worse in quality from before (often hilariously so), furnished an actually interesting narrative, in spite of themselves. Sure, it lacks the focus of Sundowning, and Vessel complaining about being famous is not intrinsically interesting; this is well-worn musical subject matter for artists of many genres. It is also not interesting hearing Vessel articulate some version of his real personality. What is most interesting to me is how Vessel’s lyrics and music reveal things about himself that he may not be aware of. In short, I am not interested in Vessel, the character, or Vessel, the man (who is also a character here, to be clear.) I am interested in Vessel telling on himself through his clumsiness. This is the defining characteristic of this album: clumsiness, confusion, and internal conflict. The album’s self-consciousness of its own inadequacy does not save it from its mediocrity. It is merely another example of modern media’s obsession with lampshading: as the logic goes, including a critique of the work within the work somehow elevates it artistically and exculpates it of its flaws while also enlightening its audience. Unfortunately for Vessel, Arcadia’s self-awareness only debases it, and what enlightenment it furnishes paints him in a deeply unflattering light.
I will be taking a different approach in discussing Even in Arcadia than I did with Sundowning in Part 1: I will begin by recapitulating some of what occurred in the intervening two albums. In contrast with Sundowning, the musical and narrative elements in Arcadia are significantly more varied and are less easily generalizable. As a result, the etiology of these elements is best understood through their two prior releases. The discussion of Arcadia following this section will focus on the songs I feel are most relevant to understanding the album’s musical direction and narrative.
The Story So Far
Sleep Token’s second album, This Place Will Become Your Tomb, true to the title, opens with the rousing track “Atlantic,” which depicts an attempted suicide by drowning. Aquatic themes permeate the album, which depicts Vessel growing ever more haunted by Sleep until he meets a woman who seems to momentarily shake him out of the god’s clutches. Of course, things go south, and by the end of it Vessel is alone again with the final track, “Missing Limbs,” alluding to the outsize loss of his lover. Sleep is relegated to the background as the love between Vessel and this new woman takes center stage. Musically, there is a bit more experimentation: my absolute favorite track on the album, “Hypnosis,” is one of their heaviest and most intoxicating and strongly evokes the music of Deftones. There are also more tracks eschewing metal elements altogether, such as the Imogen Heap homage “Fall For Me,” which strike me as generically underwhelming, and the surprisingly convincing song “Descending,” which recalls Mezzanine by Massive Attack or After Hours by The Weeknd. They are generally less reliant on their trademark song form here, which is laudable and mostly quite effective, but many of the lyrics feel more like generic love songs rather than the more devotional offerings on Sundowning. Ironically, by introducing an obvious “she” into the story, the potential for each song to be read dualistically is eliminated, and through this added specificity they somehow made the narrative feel less focused than before. Overall, it is two steps forward musically, one step back lyrically. While still great, it is less compelling than their previous effort.
Their next album, Take Me Back to Eden, was the reason Sleep Token exploded in popularity and became a household name. It is also where the band’s musical tendencies begin to exaggerate in a way that results in some of their highest highs and their lowest lows, the latter being realized fully on Even in Arcadia. As the final album in their original trilogy, the story begins with Vessel recommitting to Sleep and asking for his guidance and protection on the song “Chokehold.” The next track, “The Summoning,” is both one of their most fun, and a harbinger of their future pitfalls. The song has a compelling riff underpinning it that obscures the barline—it can be heard in 4/4 but the phrases play with groupings of notes within that which imply mixed meter.1 This is one of their proggiest musical ideas in their catalog. The chorus is an infectious falsetto moan exhorting Sleep, or more likely a new lover, to take him (and all of us) “past the edge.” The song includes a breakdown, this time debuting more refined screams from Vessel.2 There is a guitar solo, a rarity for them, and after the second chorus there is a very long musical interlude wherein the band does not play.3 This is build-up for a bizarre genre-shift that would launch their streaming numbers into the stratosphere, along with a sea of Tik-Tok dances by sultry goth girls getting in on the action. The song breaks into an honest-to-goodness boom-chicka-wow-wow funk section wherein Vessel hits on a girl like the creepy guy who stays until last call at the bar, telling her, “I would be lying if I told you that/I didn’t wish that I could be your man…or maybe make a good girl bad.” I cannot overstate how jarring this was to hear for the first time. It is, ultimately, a very enjoyable song, but gimmicky—trashy, even—in a way that felt unprecedented. I enjoy Sleep Token being creepy-sexy, but there’s a fine line between the seductive charm of a mysterious, reluctant avatar of a near-dead god and the dudebro in a tattered band tee saying he knows how to tie a square knot with the scent of Fireball hot on his bearded breath. This song is where it all goes downhill.
Up until now, their genre experimentation had felt somewhat measured. On their second album, the vocoder pop of “Fall for Me” was jarring, but was contained to a single track and maintained the romantic air of their typical fare. “The Summoning” is where the genre-shifts begin occurring more markedly to the point that they border on parody. From another band, this would seem an obvious attempt at humor, but from a group that has cultivated a profoundly self-serious persona, it felt like a Hail-Mary attempt at virality. It got them that–but at the cost of their soul. Take Me Back to Eden is their first album not produced by the brilliant George Lever, but instead by Carl Bown. The result is more timid production, relegating the formerly prominent drums and guitars to the background and Vessel’s vocals to the fore. I also suspect Bown had a hand in the composition. While I can only speculate as to the cause of their newfound musical mannerism4, clearly someone on the creative team or the label pushed them in this direction, as the stench of corporate sabotage is all over the album.
This album continues the trend of increased stylistic diversity: tracks like “Granite,” “Ascencionism,” “The Apparition,” and “Rain” would largely be at home on Sundowning, but more new sounds are thrown into the mix. The opening track, “Chokehold,” is unique within their catalog in its spacious, swung feel. “Vore” experiments with their typical song form while introducing elements from black metal such as blast beats and high screams. There are two straight-ahead pop songs, the loungey “Aqua Regia” and the hyperpop-inflected “DYWTYLM.” The problem with Sleep Token’s pop songs is that they do not innovate in any way, nor do they impress through mastery of the forms they attempt to recreate. They are frankly distracting and would likely only be justifiable inclusions if the band brought in outside writers, which is the norm in pop, but frowned-upon in metal.5 At nearly eight and a half minutes, the title track was their longest song to date at the time of its release. It’s a blend of their typical piano/synth ballad textures, trap-rap (this time with actual Drake-style sing-rapping that dates the track a fair deal), sections with the full band, and finally another left-field genre-shift where the guitar detunes significantly and another black metal breakdown ensues. The effect here is a degree less jarring and more satisfying than that of the surprise ending in “The Summoning” because it feels better telegraphed, and after nearly 7 minutes of buildup, it is a welcome catharsis. It’s the sort of song that feels like it should be impossible, a mad scientist’s invention that’s so crazy it just might work.6 Regrettably, instead of ending the album with a bang, they round out the trilogy with the final track, “Euclid,” a reprise of the opening of Sundowning.
Lyrically there are few novel developments. Mostly Vessel continues to be caught in the Totentanz with Sleep while reminiscing on a past abusive lover, who could be either of the women from the past albums. The title track offers the closest thing to plot development, with Vessel imploring his past lover to come back to him and resolving to leave Sleep for good. The finale, “Euclid,” reinforces this notion that Vessel is healing from his past abuse, and possibly entering a new era without his patron deity. This was an exciting development that hinted at a possible future Sleep Token without Sleep, and I was excited for this new story arc. I did become concerned that some of the prose had degraded a fair deal in quality and in tone (as in “The Summoning”) but I hoped the trend would not hold. Boy, was I wrong.
Musically, Eden was another instance of the band improving along certain axes, but degrading more along others. Their genre-shifts had grown more exaggerated and the genres they borrowed from already felt dated by the album’s release in 2023. The songs that hew closer to their house style are mostly adequate, not outstanding, but there is a sense that they were experimenting with moving toward a heavier style more evocative of their proggy roots. While flawed, the two proggiest songs, “The Summoning” and “Take Me Back to Eden,” include some of their most exciting moments across their catalog. However, while they are inventive in a sort of ramshackle way, they give the impression that Sleep Token’s tightly-crafted sound might soon burst open at the seams. And on Even in Arcadia, it did.
Even in Arcadia
Even in Arcadia opens with a middling attempt at an epic, “Look to Windward.” This song exemplifies many of the systemic musical and lyrical issues that plague the rest of the record. The song’s title alludes to Part IV of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, though the reference feels somewhat random, the first of copious allusions to science and religion throughout the album that range from merely awkward to genuinely pretentious and ornamental. On this track, Vessel spews as many of these as he can during the laughably dated Views-era-Drake-style rap section:
Even in this garden of gardens, I am the god of the gaps
I am the demon of Sodom, I am the blood of an angel
The fate of the fallen, nobody knows where I came from
Even I have forgotten
How could I already lose my way like this?
Drowning in burning bright abyss
Even at stratospheric depths
This vertigo of bliss
Like Phlebas in Part IV of The Wasteland, Vessel is being ravaged by the ocean, but instead of dying ignominiously like the Phonecian physician, he is grappling with a loss of identity as he is reborn into something darker and more twisted through Sleep’s renewed influence. He urges the listener to “halt this eclipse in [him],” before he loses his humanity entirely. The text to this song feels much more try-hard than their past efforts: we have a reference to the garden of Eden, and then a reference to a Creationist talking point, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the “blood of an angel.” If we are talking about being beside the ocean, why are we talking about a garden? Are we in the world of Eliot’s London, or are we in Eden? Or is it Arcadia? On another note, why was this album not called “Even in Eden,” as Eden and Arcadia are both paradises of slightly different provenances but basically semantically equivalent? If Take Me Back to Eden was about Vessel escaping Sleep for good, and Even in Arcadia is going to immediately retcon that, the least they could do is be more intentional about it.
Mixed references aside, this song can also be read as a commentary on the trials and tribulations of Vessel’s getting too famous too quickly. However, it feels like Vessel is posturing hard to live up to his die-hard fans’ image of him as the stalwart King of Metal. Ultimately, the only emotion I buy from Vessel anymore is his self-loathing, though even that will come to feel highly performative by the album’s close. Arcadia is a bizarre listen because it includes both songs like this that feel like they are trying hard to impress the listener, and others that feel apologetic for wasting their time.
Admirably, the band has continued striving to break out of their trademark musical formula in this first track. The song clocks in at 7:46, making it their third-longest track ever. There is a lot of material here and somewhat tedious pacing. The song would benefit from lengthening the metal sections and shortening everything else–a criticism I have of the entire record. The breakdown is satisfying, though too brief. The trap portion afterwards feels utterly extraneous—this sort of style was already on its way out in 2018-2019 when Sundowning came out, so after two subsequent albums this is beyond warmed over. The metal instrumentals are boring, but serviceable, and much better than anything else on the song. Still, it wouldn’t have killed them to attempt to vary the rhythms beyond the most square, standard metal riffs. Vocally, there could be much more done to vary the registers, and this is another systemic issue across the album. This is especially frustrating given that ST’s music has grown increasingly vocally-driven since Sundowning. Similarly, the drums are majorly underutilized here and on the rest of the work.
Before I get into the heart of my criticisms, I want to highlight the one song I unabashedly like. The second track, “Emergence,” is my favorite song on the album. It absolutely has that ramshackle quality of the longer, more epic tracks on Eden but is more tightly written. It was the first single and it got me so excited for the rest of the album. There is a little bit of everything ST are known for: a piano ballad opening, a trap rap verse (this time superimposed over djent riffs; notably they have not combined these styles previously, a crushing breakdown, and then an outro with saxophone, of all things. It is a bit of a mess, but a beautiful one, and no matter how much I listen to it I remain convinced of its effectiveness. This song is risky, and that risk-taking makes it the sole true prog entry on this album. It is also quite wordy, and full of references to everything from microchips to the chest-bursters from Alien. The text is noisy, but there is a discernable signal: Vessel seems to be trying to rehabilitate his patron deity one last time, appealing to Sleep’s better nature and asking him to emerge as something new. On a meta-level, it feels like he is trying to resuscitate Sleep as a concept around which to center their music, lest they risk alienating the fans. It is uncomfortably honest in a way that feels more genuine than the later, more self-consciously confessional tracks. The lyrics to this song and the first seem to maintain the mythic register of their past music, but the next track, “Past Self” is where Vessel begins to peel off the mask.
“Past Self” utterly obliterates the carefully-crafted aesthetic of the entire Sleep Token discography. The music is, on the surface, unassuming: it is a saccharine, hollow R&B tune. This feels like something Jeremih would have come out with in 2015, but unlike Vessel, Jeremih has got the range. In general, the vocal performance lets this song down. From this point onward on the album, Vessel’s conservative vocal choices start to more noticeably undermine the music. This song, and every single song on Arcadia besides Emergence feels unfinished. As the music progressively declines in quality on the record, so does my ability to take it seriously. What merit is there in critically engaging with a series of pale imitations of Black genres that were done better 10 years ago, by actual Black artists? From here onward, gone are most of the techniques from Sundowning, in come the label-mandated pop tunes.
The story takes a sharp turn here, too: Vessel is pulling a Marvel-movie look-to-the-camera fourth wall-break here, but because this is Sleep Token, we don’t get humor or levity but grumbling about how hard it is to be famous. Here’s another idea a Black artist has done better: of all things, this song reminds me of 20 Questions by 50 Cent. That song is about 50 Cent imploring a woman to stand by him, even if he loses his fame and fortune. This actually works because 1) 50 Cent is cool (or at least, was sort of cool until he became a business mogul and a Trumper) and 2) 50 Cent nearly died from an assassination attempt that saw him take nine bullets and emerge somehow even more jacked and badass, which was the ultimate credibility boost for a latter-day gangsta rapper. In light of the shooting, it is obvious this song is meant to be read as an address to 50’s fans to stand by him as well.
The maniacal behavior of Sleep Token fans is well-documented, and is further addressed later on the album. Vessel, and the band, have every right to feel like their position is precarious, even dangerous (track four, another song about the fans, is literally titled “Dangerous.”) But there is a difference between fans posting your drummer’s birth certificate online and shouting your real names at shows, and getting shot because you still had connections to street life. Despite how genuinely disconcerting it is to be doxxed and to have legions of people engaging in combative, disrespectful behavior online and in person, I strongly doubt that this burden ultimately rises to anything beyond a mental one. Teenage girls don’t tend to carry glocks into shows. (Hell, most big venues won’t even let me bring my wallet chain.) If the album had started with this mask-off approach, perhaps I would have been more convinced. Unfortunately, Vessel lacks the experience, charisma, and attention span to pull off being autobiographical. Out of either self-awareness or incompetence, he later abandons this idea: the “real-life Vessel” story arc only lasts for four songs before he dives into another (awful) sub-plot on “Provider.” Prior to this, though, we must discuss the most confounding, and most important song on the album; a song that lays bare all of Vessel’s confusion and inner turmoil in ways both intended and inadvertent: “Caramel.”
“Caramel” is the most frustrating song on the album to talk about. It is also the most interesting song narratively because it is Vessel at his most candid about his struggles with fame. Reading the lyrics, you get the sense he’s working through his feelings in real time as he’s writing each part of the song. The lyrics are full of more rapid-fire mixed metaphors which belabor the point. The message amounts to something like this: “Being famous is hard, and it’s sort of awesome, but my fans are crazy and make me feel crazy with the antics they pull.7 I thought success would solve my inner issues, but wherever I go, there I am. I wish I could go back to before, but I’ll make the most of it until you all are sick of me.” It’s tragic, but also pretty whiny—the chorus urges fans to “stick to [him] like caramel/Walk beside [him] till you feel nothin' as well.” While I acknowledge imposter syndrome is something virtually every artist deals with, it is pretty distasteful to simultaneously ask me for my loyalty as a fan but also apologize because you know your music is in rapid decline. I don’t want to hear an artist who is selling out arena tours heap on self-pity because he knows deep down it won’t last because his songwriting isn’t what it used to be. I just want him to make better music. That is how you repay people for their attention. The prose here is so colloquial that it’s distracting—it’s unsettling to have an album opener referencing poetry and Christian imagery to talk about turning into something you don’t recognize, and then four songs later Vessel is writing high school notebook-worthy lines like “I'm not gonna be there tripping on the grapevine/They can sing the words while I cry into the bassline.”8 Indeed, Vessel is unrecognizable here. “Windward” and “Caramel” articulate the same idea with very different lyrical voices, and yet both songs feel so fruitlessly effortful.
All of this would be more convincing if the music were actually good, and it almost is. They have written a genuinely serviceable reggaeton song.9 The music box-like synths on verse 1 and chorus 1 are appropriately spacious, and II’s drumming on verse 2 wonderfully highlights his knowledge of Black vernacular genres. The bridge lets Vessel’s voice shine and drive home the emotional core of the song:
Too young to get bitter over it all
Too old to retaliate like before
Too blessed to be caught ungrateful, I know
So I'll keep dancin' along to the rhythm
This stage is a prison (Too young to get bitter over it all), a beautiful nightmare
A war of attrition (Too old to retaliate like before), I'll take what I'm given
The deepest incisions (Too blessed to be caught ungrateful, I know), I thought I got better
But maybe I didn't
Up until now, they’ve written 3/4ths of a pop song I actually like, but they don’t stick the landing. They shoehorn in a black metal breakdown that is clearly antagonizing the audience for expecting a metal song as Vessel sings, “Tell me, did I give you what you came for?” While this is a fun idea, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it sounds bad. They would have to mix these parts much more convincingly for it to sound as brutal as it needs to for the joke to land.10 I just wanted this to be a nice reggaeton song, but ultimately their tendency since Eden to use genre-blending not as a garnish but as a gimmick wins out here. It is a disappointing ploy at making their music more viral.11 Seeing as Sleep Token just signed to the massive label, RCA Records, they are clearly only beginning a new chapter in their music. I suspect RCA, with their star-studded pop roster featuring the likes of Doja Cat and Brittney Spears, had a heavy hand in pushing this album to sound closer to their other artists.
Following “Caramel” is the unremarkable piano ballad, “Even in Arcadia” which serves as the album’s midpoint. From here onward, things go full-tilt into cringe territory. The next song, “Provider,” is the most unintentionally hilarious song on the album by far. This is the clear nadir for Sleep Token. We open with Hammond organ, a sound they’ve used well before on their EP, Two, but combined with the utterly smarmy vocals and lyrics it feels, frankly, like minstrelsy. Their borrowing of genres has become something of an arms race where they have to continue to exaggerate their pivots away from a metal sound to keep farming clicks and shares from the reaction crowd on YouTube and TikTok. In doing this, they somehow manage to sound both utterly jarring and incredibly generic, because they perform these less subtle genre-shifts without consideration or care. As a Black listener, this lack of care feels disrespectful. II has gone on record to say how inspired he has been by Black genres such as House and Gospel, and the way he weaves elements of those genres into his drum parts feels tasteful, informed, and most importantly, reverent. But post-Eden, their pilfering from trap and R&B feels less like them getting more intimate and vulnerable as they intend but more like a mask–A Black one.
The text is so awful it is genuinely painful. The lyrics read like a guitar ballad a frat bro would play at a party to woo the mall goth sorority girl he’s been sitting next to in Econ all semester:
I wanna be a provider
Garner you with silk like a spider
Roll or die, you bet, I'm a rider
Your outer shell, your secret insider
It is trying to be “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin in sentiment, but it sounds like Usher without any of the sex appeal (or the vocal agility.) Alternatively, perhaps in their shameless theft from Black artists, they are more like Zeppelin than I thought–I guess they are rock’n’roll after all. In this new story arc, Vessel is all swagger as he postures like a self-proclaimed Daddy Dom whose darkest kink is light breathplay. He seems to be getting back with his ex–possibly the woman in Sundowning. Regardless, the act is not convincing. Let’s be clear: Sundowning was about Vessel being a submissive in a masochistic union with an ancient deity whose relationships with women saw him equally disempowered and humiliated. Clearly, she got the upper hand in the end, just like before as we will see on “Gethsemane.”
“Provider” is followed by another bland piano ballad, the melodramatically-titled “Damocles.” This song features the the most insulting line of the album:
Well, I know I should be touring
I know these chords are boring
But I can't always be killing the game
Like I said about “Caramel,” it is manipulative and offensive to write music that you know is beneath your standard of quality and use that music to demand my sympathy for its mediocrity. There is one interesting line: “When what is silent to you feels like it's screaming to me,” which seems to reference the line from “Higher”: “And you need the melody/I only need the silence.” Vessel might be saying he needs time to himself to regulate, but now his silence has itself become deafening with thoughts of doubt. But also he might be saying that he only makes music because he is literally forced to by RCA *cough* I mean Sleep. Boohoo. Success must be overcome. Unfortunately, Vessel is about to take another massive L in the next song.
Surprisingly, “Gethsemane” grew on me after repeated listens. However, first I had to suffer through Vessel’s cloying, whimpering falsetto in the intro:
You were my harlequin bride, I was your undercover lover, but no
You never saw me naked, you wouldn't even touch me
Except if you were wasted
Vessel fails to understand that his self-pity is only compelling in light of his masochism: if he is not complicit in his suffering, there are no stakes, there is no sex appeal. There is nothing sexy about complaining that a goth girl wasn’t that into you. The drumming and clean guitar following the intro are genuinely thrilling–it’s the closest ST have ever come to mathcore and it is a welcome change of pace. Unfortunately, like anything good on this album, it doesn’t last, and it quickly gives way to more wimpy falsetto wailing. Then there is a rather fun breakdown which gives way to, you guessed it, even more Drake-style sing-rapping and then the song just…fizzles out.
Moreover, I cannot forgive the lyrics. Vessel is addressing his ex from Sundowning as he did in Provider and clearly the New Relationship Energy did not last. Vessel’s Daddy Dom-era did not last, either—she was abusive, like before, and he was the proverbial punching bag. There are some Real Rupi Kaur-level bars here. That vibe was always there in songs like Blood Sport but that song felt at least somewhat original. Also, there is a profound narcissism in naming a song like this “Gethsemane.”12 Yeah? Are you literally Jesus because you dated a hot goth girl who did the Mexican hat-dance on top of your heart?
As the album began, the final track is another epic, bafflingly titled “Infinite Baths.” I truly do not care that this is an allusion to quantum physics symbolizing Vessel’s acceptance of himself, some words just aren’t meant for music. Despite a fun breakdown, the musical issues in “Windward” are all reproduced here. The outro feels like a majorly missed opportunity for the instrumental parts to get much, much crazier. Why didn’t they detune even more? Where are the blast beats? Where, oh where is the syncopation? These are things they’ve done to up the ante before and they are all absent here. They seem to not know how to end a truly heavy section because they fade out at the end, just like on “Take Me Back to Eden.” And with that, the album simply washes away.
Acceptance or Rebound?
We are meant to be left with a sense that Vessel has accepted himself for who he is, but I have a different interpretation. The song could be read as Vessel retreating into the arms of yet another woman who finally understands him, but this would undermine the previous story arc. The breakdown here makes the subject crystal-clear, as it depicts Vessel offering his blood sacrament to Sleep once more in a final bid for his blessing. As Vessel says at the end of “Caramel,” he thought he got better, but maybe he didn’t.
Even in Arcadia is a challenging album to dissect because it is fundamentally conscious of its own constructedness; the album is aware of its own failure. The tonal whiplash of the songwriting feels genuine, sure—Vessel is wrestling with his status as a rock god, with the genuine power that his stage persona has, and also the way that that same persona limits him as a person creatively and otherwise. Additionally, it opens him up to new parasocial dangers that are now a part of his daily life. He is cycling between conflicting, even contradictory emotions. Of course fame would make you feel crazy in this way, and I have sympathy for that, to a point. But I think the album’s attempted self-awareness is its biggest failure: the clunky creative choices in the music and lyrics feel much more revealing of Vessel’s mental state than anything he consciously tries to do, like mocking the fans in the breakdown of “Caramel”, or apologizing for his “boring chords” on “Damocles.” Vessel is so used to playing a character that even when the character is the real him, he is still acting. The man and the mask are one.
Vessel’s acting alternates between blubbering and braggadocio. He’s trying so hard to convince you that he’s a regular guy, just like us, but is too attached to appearing smarter and deeper than everyone else and you see this in his over-reliance on references. As much as there are references that feel load-bearing in their music, there are just as many others that feel ornamental, especially on Arcadia. Their so-called “lore” has always been fan-directed, and leading up to the album’s release they launched an augmented reality game to give the fans easter eggs hinting at the content of the new record. Charitably, I think the band started writing songs around a simple narrative concept in a way that helped generate cohesive musical ideas and were never truly concerned with worldbuilding. This is common practice in prog with artists like Haken: rarely do you find albums like The Fox and the Bird by OK Goodnight that tell a defined, linear story. I think the reason why the band’s detractors find this sort of writing annoying is because with each new release, they seem to be trying to stuff their music with as many callbacks and references as they can in an effort to drive up fan engagement and maximize their pareidolia.13 It’s unfortunate that Vessel’s affinity for motifs, along with his love of genre-blending, became so cynical. We may never know if this pressure to exaggerate all the attributes of his songwriting was internal or external, but the result is clear, and it sucks.
Likewise, we may never know what pressures the band was under to water down the metal elements of their music to almost nothing, but it’s clear this was a strategic decision. Sleep Token’s retreat from their metal roots reminds me of a comment that Eli Enis made in his review of Even in Arcadia for Pitchfork. It is as incisive as it is hilarious, and merits quoting in full:
But Even in Arcadia is a metal album made by musicians who appear petrified of metal’s fundamental pleasures—screams, breakdowns, violence, riffs, exhilaration, exaltation. Instead, Sleep Token’s major-label debut mostly offers sanitized pop-rap with all the sexed-up verve of Droopy the dog.
This wasn’t always true. The EPs One and Two feel rooted in prog—the riffs sound more like something you’d find on a Periphery song, and the integration of pop and R&B elements was more subtle, facile, and sincere. There was still some clunkiness in the compositions, to be sure, but they felt clunky in a proggy way. Sundowning took that raw enthusiasm and condensed it into something tighter and indeed, more marketable. But the heavier moments on that album felt earned, and pleasurable. The eroticism of the album was not limited to the softer parts. In fact, the entry of the band on each song was what completed the songs’ erotic arcs.
When the band lost sight of pleasure, they lost sight of what their own music was really about, and you can hear it in the uninspired writing. What garners mass appeal is often not what is the highest quality, but what grabs the most attention. As they continue to bastardize their own ethos, their old music will endure. I take comfort in that. I hope Vessel will come to see that he was already writing mature, groundbreaking, catchy music before he was famous, and perhaps he’ll have his come-to-Jesus (or maybe go-to-Sleep) moment and return to his roots. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep belting out “Sugar” at karaoke.
Coda
I must address a gripe I developed while researching this essay: there is a real streak of queer erasure in how Sleep Token’s lyrics are discussed online. The band has been very clear that Sleep is a masculine deity and yet the mainstream interpretation of their lyrics conflates Sleep with the feminine subjects Vessel references. There is no convincing explanation of such an obvious omission of readily available information beyond sheer homophobia. Paradoxically, fans frequently refer to Vessel with they/them pronouns, queering a character beyond his own self-identification. Vessel is very clear in his music that he is a man. This sort of wishful, forced representation is incredibly disrespectful and reminds me of the TikToker (who I will not link here) who blew up in popularity for asserting that Kurt Cobain was a closeted trans woman. I hope that both parts of this essay offer a fresh, queer perspective to correct the record for future discourse.
For a fabulous breakdown of this track as well as songs by Opeth and The Ocean, see Yogev Gabay’s video here.
As mentioned in Part 1, the mixing here undermines the full effect, which is noticeable throughout Eden and Arcadia.
In live shows, II improvises a drum solo here. I am genuinely confused as to why this was not done on the album, the space here lasts far too long for comfort.
I’d call it a sort of musical Flanderization. Named for The Simpsons’ character Ned Flanders, this term refers to the process that occurs in long-running TV shows wherein minute aspects of characters' personalities become exaggerated beyond recognition in a constant effort to up the ante of the story.
And no one would want to be known as the Drake of metal. Although Vessel's softboi persona, his comfort with corporate concessions, his affinity for lifeless R&B as well as his wholesale ripping-off of Drake’s rap cadence squarely put him in that category.
Remarkably, the three choruses of “Take Me Back to Eden” are in three different keys, and alterations are made to the vocal line to accommodate this: the first instance is in G# minor, the second is in E-flat minor, and the third is in F minor. I wish they took more harmonic leaps of faith like this.
The About section of the Genius annotation for “Caramel” summarizes the key events around this song well.
This is a thing Vessel just actually does on stage. He also cries audibly at the end of “Blood Sport” on Sundowning. Vessel seems to be conflicted about the authenticity and merit of this tendency, himself, as evidenced by his conversation with “Sleep” about it at a live show in LA. For me, his fictionalizing of this inner conflict actually makes him look less authentic. This too is a performance, Vessel.
Funnily enough, Caramel is also not the only metal song I can think of that incorporates reggaeton/dancehall rhythms: the breakdown of "Suffocate” by Knocked Loose featuring Poppy is just a straight-up reggaeton beat. Notably, it is the opposite of “Caramel” because it is a metal song breaking into reggaeton rather than a reggaeton song breaking into metal.
The song “Enough?” by Paleface Swiss pulls off this idea much more convincingly: it starts as a rap song lashing out against homophobia in the deathcore scene and ends with a crushing metal beatdown that is a direct “up yours” to the fans for pushing back on the band’s evolving musical direction.
An addendum: before the album’s release, there were hints from the band and within the fandom that “Caramel” would be a spiritual successor to “Sugar.” I do not see any similarity between these songs thematically or musically. This is yet another example of a callback that ultimately is an empty signifier.
I recognize that they were doing this sort of thing with songs like “Nazareth” from their EP, Two. That album’s songs are all named after religiously significant cities which have no relation to the themes in the text. If anything, they should have named “Nazareth” “Gethsemane” instead! After all, Gethsemane is where Christ was sold out to be murdered and “Nazareth” is a lurid ballad rejoicing in the killing of a sex worker.
This reminds me of film director JJ Abrams’ infamous “mystery box” approach to screenwriting: put enough ideas into something, never follow up, and the audience will do the legwork for you.