‘It’s all fan-driven. Individuals are in absolute raptures’: how mysterious masked rockers Sleep Token took over metallic | Metallic

On Saturday, Sleep Token headlined Obtain pageant in Leicestershire. Topping the invoice on the pageant is one thing of a ceremony of passage for artists of a sure musical bent, proof that you’re now among the many largest bands in metallic and exhausting rock: Metallica, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Black Sabbath and Weapons N’ Roses are all former headliners. Final month, Sleep Token’s fourth album, Even in Arcadia, debuted on the high of each the British and American charts. Their most up-to-date UK tour took within the largest venues within the nation: the identical is true of their forthcoming US tour. In 2025, Sleep Token might moderately declare to be the most important British rock band on the earth.

However they wouldn’t, as a result of Sleep Token function behind a veil of anonymity. They’ve given just about no interviews over the course of their profession. The band’s frontman and chief songwriter is thought solely as Vessel; the opposite members are known as II, III and IV. They carry out reside carrying masks, hoods and physique paint to hide their identities and promote a fictional mythology: it’s too sprawling and complicated to clarify right here – one fan has apparently produced a 35,000-word thesis on the topic – nevertheless it includes the band being a mouthpiece for a deity known as Sleep. Their gigs are known as Rituals, their albums as Choices, their social media posts ceaselessly open with the phrase “Behold” and finish with the phrase “Worship”. Like Hogwarts pupils, their followers are divided into “homes”: one known as Feathered Host, the opposite Home Viridian.

It’s not an strategy completely with out precedent – the 70s progressive rock band Magma developed a mythology a couple of planet known as Kobaïa, even singing in its “language”, Kobaïan – nevertheless it’s exhausting to consider anybody who has turned it to such industrial benefit. “Nobody noticed this coming – it’s all fan-driven, it wasn’t pushed by anybody else,” says Luke Morton, editor of exhausting rock journal Kerrang!. “I believe it was throughout the pandemic after they actually hit their stride – there was an escapist factor, this world you may lose your self in. TikTok had a big half to play in it – they only discovered this new viewers which are so totally into it. I noticed them in 2022 at Hammersmith Apollo, and there have been individuals in floods of tears, in absolute raptures, simply shedding themselves on this world.”

After all, it takes seconds of Googling to find Vessel’s actual identify, and certainly a video of him aged 18, providing his providers as an internet piano tutor. However the hanging factor about Sleep Token’s followers is that they don’t appear to wish to know, or a minimum of wish to fake they don’t. Their on-line boards are ruled by guidelines forbidding “offering info that results in figuring out members”. “Cease making an attempt to interrupt the spell,” counselled one fan on Instagram just lately. “Simply like it the best way it’s or depart it.”

No matter you make of all this, it’s a minimum of an intriguing corrective to the concept Twenty first-century music followers need artists to be relatable – as like themselves as attainable – and that they basically view music itself as a gossipy extension of artists’ lives, all the time scanning lyrics for clues to feuds with fellow stars or coded vitriol geared toward former companions. As an alternative, Sleep Token’s success appears to key right into a supposedly old style, relatively Bowie-esque concept that pop stars needs to be distant, distant, fantastical figures, their music a portal right into a world very completely different from your individual.

And but, Sleep Token’s success has proved controversial. Even in Arcadia attracted some scathing critiques – Pitchfork known as it “sanitized pop-rap with all of the sexed-up verve of Droopy the canine” and their followers “dumb as hell”; The Needle Drop deemed it “plain and uninspired” and “metallic for Disney adults”.

To which any exhausting rock fan would possibly shrug: so what? Ever because the debut album by heavy metallic’s founding fathers Black Sabbath was dismissed by Rolling Stone as “claptrap” and “a shuck”, the type of artists that play at Obtain and have in Kerrang! have historically struggled to draw reward from the mainstream music press. However Sleep Token have attracted opprobrium from contained in the exhausting rock group, too. Their preliminary success was adjoining to the progressive metallic subgenre, a world of advanced rhythms, prolonged songs and spectacular technical proficiency: they’re massive on a sound known as djent, which basically means difficult riffs performed on muted, low-pitch guitars. They all the time boasted a melodic sensibility, nevertheless it has turn out to be progressively extra pronounced over their profession: on Even in Arcadia, djent and what Morton calls “massive, crushing breakdowns” are outweighed by the affect of R&B, hip-hop, dance music and easy pop. Some voices have began questioning whether or not they actually should be known as a tough rock band in any respect, amongst them – unexpectedly – TV presenter and writer Richard Osman: “It’s not exhausting rock,” he protested. “It’s the least metallic factor I’ve ever heard.”

Certainly, a lot criticism has flown Sleep Token’s manner that Doc Coyle, of US metallic bands God Forbid, Trivium and Lamb of God amongst others, just lately felt impelled to take to the web of their defence, penning an article decrying “pretentious gatekeeping” and “a poisonous heavy metallic tradition”: it’s maybe price noting that Sleep Token’s fanbase skews younger.

For his half, Morton thinks their success is proof that “tribalism is a factor of the previous”: as he factors out, elsewhere at this yr’s Obtain, McFly – a manufactured 00s pop band with a vaguely punk-ish lilt – are headlining a stage, which might have been unthinkable on the peak of their fame. “There’s a backlash amongst metallic elitists, however elitism all the time exists in heavy music, it has performed since grunge occurred. There’s a backlash to any kind of band that will get in style,” he says. “Nu-metal occurred and folks moaned, emo occurred and folks moaned. What I’ve seen extra of is a quiet adoration for the way massive this all is: a ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ factor. When you don’t prefer it, wonderful.”

However amid the mythology and lore, it’s exhausting to not discover that a number of the lyrics on Even in Arcadia indicate a sure weariness on the a part of Sleep Token’s chief. “I swear it’s getting more durable even to exhale … I strive to not speak about the way it’s more durable now,” presents its most-streamed track, Caramel, including “this stage is a jail, a gorgeous nightmare”.

Maybe the actual existential risk to the band’s continued success won’t be the criticism they’ve attracted, however Sleep Token themselves, whoever they’re.