When I was a youngin, I remember turning my nose up at a handful of KMFDM CDs I found at the flea market in my hometown's fall festival. I was something of a metal purist as a teenager, as any young uncracked egg tends to be. Now, after a decade of service in the local goth/industrial night, I am kicking myself for being so dense and obtuse in that moment, especially considering I grabbed Nine Inch Nails CDs without thinking twice about it.
Yeah, that kid didn't make sense. Wonder how he turned out...
Point is, it is in these different subgenres where fans can find their new faves. Even the kvltest of the black metal scene or the truest defenders of the proverbial faith began with bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica and went from there. The metal family tree runs deep, and one of the latest blooming branches is Sleep Token, and that's sticking in a fair few peoples' collective craw.
One criticism I keep seeing online regarding Sleep Token is that they're "not metal." This tells me that these folks have only heard "Emergence" from the band's most recent album, last year's Even in Arcadia, which I reviewed for this very publication. Yes, the song takes a while to kick in, never mind the jazzy saxophone break in the third act, but the slow burn pays off in a big way. It isn't heavy all the way through, but when the extended-range guitars start popping off, it's affecting in a way that a lot of modern metal struggles to be.
Then we have "Caramel," the genre-agnostic single that has spent the last year and change on the Billboard Hot Hard Rock Songs chart, and no doubt had a hand in helping the album go Gold in January of this year. Yes, commercial success is only one measure of a band's overall success, but then we take into account their world tour selling out in nigh-record time, and clearly there's something here.
What makes this song tick? Why does it work so well? It runs a veritable genre gamut, starting off with a music box intro, followed by a moombahton drum beat. It takes a full two minutes of a five-minute track for the guitars to finally kick in and take things firmly into metal territory, and it only goes into overdrive during the bridge, which goes full black metal with blast beats and Vessel's howling vocals. The song as a whole ebbs and flows, not staying with one mood or vibe for too long, creating a dynamic experience.
And this is the song that is a bee in folks' bonnet? I get it, it may not be for everyone. They play fast and loose with genre conventions and that may be a lot for some folks, or it may not be to their taste, or both. But dismissing this as "not even metal" is crazy work. Sleep Token have done something that is damn hard to do in a genre as maligned as metal: they've made something accessible without sacrificing their integrity. Their value is in their experimentation, their bucking of trends to ultimately become one. The amount of bands I've seen trying to reheat ST's nachos is staggering, and it reminds me of the old adage from Captain Lou Albano: often imitated, never duplicated.
Further, their mystery and anonymity as not just a gimmick, but a point of contention and expression within their music, has made the band all the more captivating. "Caramel" weighs the burden of success ("But I'm still glad you came, so let me see those hands) and the loss of privacy and normalcy ("Terrified to answer my own front door"), while carrying on in spite of it all ("So I'll keep dancing along to the rhythm") and reckoning with it all ("This stage is a prison, a beautiful nightmare").
Finally, one note that I've seen all over our coverage of this band: how are they nu metal? If we want to get pedantic, they're post-metal or progressive metal, with affectations of black metal and a bit of djent thrown in. But as narrow as the label of nu metal is sometimes painted to be, it is a broader term than we might think. Do Deftones sound the same as Korn? Fundamentally, no, but both use extended-range guitars and ambient noise in their music, and those are features of the genre. Are Slipknot and Linkin Park all that similar? No, but usually fans of one are fans of the other, and their respective lead vocalists are among the most celebrated in the game.
All of this to say that the criticism of Sleep Token feels like a false flag. Metalheads can be the most back-asswards fans at time, in that they want more people to like what they like, but look down upon bands that actually create the gateways and lower the drawbridges for people to check out what the fuss is about. With social media being what it is today, a lot of folks are only a few scrolls or clicks away from finding their new favorite band, or finding some artist that sounds similar to one they already blast on the regular.
Are Sleep Token a generational talent? That's not the question I'm trying to answer here, and frankly, they still have miles to go before that discussion can truly get underway, as they're not even a decade into their run, and only about three or four years into their moment in the sun on a large scale. What I will argue is that even if their music isn't to one's liking, writing it off in a "no true Scotsman" fashion or using their name as a shorthand to shit on something is doing everyone a disservice.
So in the meantime, I will keep dancing along to the rhythm, awaiting what comes next from these masked musical marvels. The best may be yet to come, and regardless of what ST5 ends up looking like whenever it comes, we can rest assured that it will be the talk of the metal world, for better or worse.
