‘It's all fan-driven. People are in absolute raptures': how mysterious masked rockers Sleep Token took over metal
On Saturday, Sleep Token headlined Download festival in Leicestershire. Topping the bill at the festival is something of a rite of passage for artists of a certain musical bent, proof that you are now among the biggest bands in metal and hard rock: Metallica, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Black Sabbath and Guns N' Roses are all former headliners. Last month, Sleep Token's fourth album, Even in Arcadia, debuted at the top of both the British and American charts. Their most recent UK tour took in the biggest venues in the country: the same is true of their forthcoming US tour. In 2025, Sleep Token could reasonably claim to be the biggest British rock band in the world.
But they wouldn't, because Sleep Token operate behind a veil of anonymity. They have given virtually no interviews over the course of their career. The band's frontman and chief songwriter is known only as Vessel; the other members are referred to as II, III and IV. They perform live wearing masks, hoods and body paint to conceal their identities and promote a fictional mythology: it's too sprawling and complex to explain here – one fan has apparently produced a 35,000-word thesis on the subject – but it involves the band being a mouthpiece for a deity called Sleep. Their gigs are referred to as Rituals, their albums as Offerings, their social media posts frequently open with the word 'Behold' and end with the word 'Worship'. Like Hogwarts pupils, their fans are divided into 'houses': one is called Feathered Host, the other House Viridian.
It's not an approach entirely without precedent – the 70s progressive rock band Magma developed a mythology about a planet called Kobaïa, even singing in its 'language', Kobaïan – but it's hard to think of anyone who has turned it to such commercial advantage. 'No one saw this coming – it's all fan-driven, it wasn't pushed by anyone else,' says Luke Morton, editor of hard rock magazine Kerrang!. 'I think it was during the pandemic when they really hit their stride – there was an escapist element, this world you could lose yourself in. TikTok had a large part to play in it – they just found this new audience that are so fully into it. I saw them in 2022 at Hammersmith Apollo, and there were people in floods of tears, in absolute raptures, just losing themselves in this world.'
Of course, it takes seconds of Googling to discover Vessel's real name, and indeed a video of him aged 18, offering his services as an online piano tutor. But the striking thing about Sleep Token's fans is that they don't seem to want to know, or at least want to pretend they don't. Their online forums are governed by rules forbidding 'providing information that leads to identifying members'. 'Stop trying to break the spell,' counselled one fan on Instagram recently. 'Just love it the way it is or leave it.'
Whatever you make of all this, it's at least an intriguing corrective to the idea that 21st-century music fans want artists to be relatable – as like themselves as possible – and that they essentially view music itself as a gossipy extension of artists' lives, always scanning lyrics for clues to feuds with fellow stars or coded vitriol aimed at former partners. Instead, Sleep Token's success seems to key into a supposedly old-fashioned, rather Bowie-esque idea that pop stars should be distant, remote, fantastical figures, their music a portal into a world very different from your own.
And yet, Sleep Token's success has proved controversial. Even in Arcadia attracted some scathing reviews – Pitchfork called it 'sanitized pop-rap with all the sexed-up verve of Droopy the dog' and their fans 'dumb as hell'; The Needle Drop deemed it 'plain and uninspired' and 'metal for Disney adults'.
To which any hard rock fan might shrug: so what? Ever since the debut album by heavy metal's founding fathers Black Sabbath was dismissed by Rolling Stone as 'claptrap' and 'a shuck', the kind of artists that play at Download and feature in Kerrang! have traditionally struggled to attract praise from the mainstream music press. But Sleep Token have attracted opprobrium from inside the hard rock community, too. Their initial success was adjacent to the progressive metal subgenre, a world of complex rhythms, lengthy songs and impressive technical proficiency: they are big on a sound called djent, which essentially means tricky riffs played on muted, low-pitch guitars. They always boasted a melodic sensibility, but it has become gradually more pronounced over their career: on Even in Arcadia, djent and what Morton calls 'big, crushing breakdowns' are outweighed by the influence of R&B, hip-hop, dance music and straightforward pop. Some voices have started questioning whether they really deserve to be called a hard rock band at all, among them – unexpectedly – TV presenter and author Richard Osman: 'It's not hard rock,' he protested. 'It's the least metal thing I've ever heard.'
Indeed, so much criticism has flown Sleep Token's way that Doc Coyle, of US metal bands God Forbid, Trivium and Lamb of God among others, recently felt impelled to take to the internet in their defence, penning an article decrying 'pretentious gatekeeping' and 'a toxic heavy metal culture': it's perhaps worth noting that Sleep Token's fanbase skews young.
For his part, Morton thinks their success is evidence that 'tribalism is a thing of the past': as he points out, elsewhere at this year's Download, McFly – a manufactured 00s pop band with a vaguely punk-ish lilt – are headlining a stage, which would have been unthinkable at the height of their fame. 'There's a backlash among metal elitists, but elitism always exists in heavy music, it has done since grunge happened. There's a backlash to any sort of band that gets popular,' he says. 'Nu-metal happened and people moaned, emo happened and people moaned. What I've seen more of is a quiet adoration for how big this all is: a 'rising tide lifts all ships' thing. If you don't like it, fine.'
But amid the mythology and lore, it's hard not to notice that some of the lyrics on Even in Arcadia imply a certain weariness on the part of Sleep Token's leader. 'I swear it's getting harder even to exhale … I try not to talk about how it's harder now,' offers its most-streamed song, Caramel, adding 'this stage is a prison, a beautiful nightmare'.
Perhaps the real existential threat to the band's continued success might not be the criticism they've attracted, but Sleep Token themselves, whoever they are.
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