ALBUM REVIEW: Sleep Token - "Take Me Back To Eden"
“Is Sleep Token the best band in the world? Maybe”
by Jesse Smith
Love them or hate them, you can not escape the reach Sleep Token has had in the past year. I’m sure everyone’s feed is just flooded with everyone losing their minds about the anonymous band. The Crazy part is the band has been around since 2016. “Take Me Back To Eden” is the groups 3rd studio album and its been this record to send them into the stratosphere. This just goes to show you that when the stars align, you consistently make good music, and have the drive to keep pushing, things just click and you blink and you’re one of the fastest rising bands in the music scene. I personally found the band about 2 years ago and instantly I was interested. They have a very unique sound and while the scene seems to praise high singers, Sleep Token has a lower, more soulful approach. No matter how much I try to pinpoint what genre they’d really fit in I simply can’t. One moment having a fully electronic soulful pop song to having a fast paced downtuned progressive metal moment, but that I think is the beauty of this project… It is art, and art makes us feel.
Artwork for Sleep Token’s album, “Take Me Back To Eden”
Before diving into the new album in its entirety, we have to acknowledge where this started for this band. The single “The Summoning” changed the course of music and the band’s status. I have never seen a band take genre boundaries and completely ignore them like Sleep Token and The Summoning took the band from 200k Monthly Listeners to 2 Million. If you haven’t heard the song, 2/3rds of the song is a really good sleep token song. Heavy in parts, emotional, dark and just good… But the last 1/3rd. After a mid-song interlude that feels like it goes on longer than it should, They rip into a funky bass fronted ending. This 1/3rd set the scene into a frenzy because the risk was so big and they nailed it like a carpenter. This is the moment that changed the band’s career, that 1/3rd of a song. Not only that, it was a surprise double release that no one saw coming. Before this, the band has been picking up steam with the 2nd album cycle and getting more eyes on the band not only for superior musicianship, but for the lore of the band. They released the opening track to the album called “Chokehold” that has a very nasty kick in that utilizes the heavy djenty bends and the slow polyrhythms. But literally the next day, the band released yet ANOTHER song and that was The Summoning. No band has really taken this release approach which, at the time, capitalized on the hype the band started to have and just skyrocketed to a height I”ve never seen. They did it again with the next batch of singles “Granite” and “Aqua Regia” pairing singles together and just adding fuel to this wildfire.
Total the band released 6 singles over the course of 4 months. All of them adding a little depth into what the album will sound like, yet all of them had different vibes. Each song had memorable parts and superior songwriting and melody construction. We went from seeing them open for In This Moment to selling out their first USA headliner in Pre Sales, all before the album drop. But now, it’s here. Knowing a majority of the songs and with the hype leading into this release, It will either be monumental or a massive flop, and I can confidently say this album has no skips. Stand out songs that were not released previously are the last three tracks “Rain”, the title Track “Take Me Back To Eden”, and “Euclid”. I personally have never heard such a strong ending to an album by anyone. The title track is an 8 minute long journey that has a divine energy almost made for Gods by Gods. The thing that got me to have my jaw hit the floor was the last track Euclid. The song has an exclamation saying “The night belongs to you” which didn’t catch my attention at first, but as the song builds and there are backing vocals layered inbetween lines it comes to a climax to only resolve to the piano and a verse from their song “The Night Does Not Belong To God” and then the album ends. Chills and literal tears came over me as I realized they ended this album with the first track of their first album, that song just so happened to be the first Sleep Token song I ever heard.
The artistry of this band mixed with the lore they hold VERY closely and that the scene seems to also hold VERY closely makes this band an anomaly. The art they have created can not be re-created which in a time full of sampling and copycats leaves a very large impact. As I think deeply and reflect on this album and the albums before, I realize they are in a league of their own and there will never be another. While using elements from Metal and being adopted in the metal scene, Sleep Token does not fit neatly into the box that Metal fans put Metal bands in. Sleep Token is as rare as Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral in the world. Only one crystal of Kyawthuite is known to exist, and Sleep Token is that for Music. There will never and can never be another. And for that, I think they may be the best band in the world.