Sleep Token: So, there are no hard-rock headliners any more? Nobody told this lot
The rise of Sleep Token has been one of the biggest and most curious success stories of modern rock. The brainchild of masked, anonymous frontman Vessel, with a band of equally enigmatic, numbered musicians, the British collective have turned the art of tease and mystery into a genuine phenomenon that, apparently, has yet to find a roof.
They don't give interviews, and what few vague insights they did offer the press in the earliest days comes to about 1,000 words in total. What they do communicate to fans is usually in symbols, or cryptic clues in artwork and lyrics. For 2021's This Place Will Become Your Tomb album, the numbers referenced turned out to be coordinates to places such as the Mariana Trench and Point Nemo, the most remote place on Earth.
For all this apparent attempt to shun human contact, they've been greatly rewarded. Their fans are legion, poring endlessly over the band's lore and lyrics, selling out two nights – 'rituals', in Sleep Token parlance – at the O2 in December almost instantly. Last month's fourth album, Even in Arcadia, a genre-crossing mix of heavy, downtuned metal, R'n'B, dreamy pop and vibey electronic washes – went straight to number one in the UK and America, setting records for most vinyl sales for hard rock in the modern era, as well as netting the highest weekly streams. Drummer II will even perform at Black Sabbath's final show in July.
On Saturday night, they hit yet another high water mark, headlining the iconic Download Festival at Britain's spiritual home of rock, Donington Park. Where Friday's headliners Green Day gave a masterclass in gigantic stadium rock, Sleep Token deal in something to rival the theatrical bombast and enormous production values of Beyoncé or Lady Gaga. If rock doesn't produce headliners any more, nobody told this lot.
Their staging – revealed by a curtain drop that looked perilously close to going wrong – took the form of a massive, multi-level, structure tying in with Even in Arcadia's gardeny artwork, featuring cliffs, ornate archways, a massive doorway, and the band's logo sigil in a dazzling array of lights. Petals rained down non-stop from the roof during the heavy opener Look to Windward, while during Emergence, an actual waterfall began to cascade down the craggy backdrop, fuelled by apparently 60 tonnes of liquid contained in the stage roof.
Then there's Vessel himself, cutting a sort of kabuki figure, pacing slowly across the stage in an ornate, armoured robe, with his shredded chest and arms blacked out. He's a curious fellow, leaving most of the grandstanding to his more extrovert bandmates. But this just makes him all the more compelling, even if the recent Top 10 single Caramel finds him declaring, 'This stage is a prison, a beautiful nightmare'. As with the music, his vocals aren't always standard rock fare. Often, he sounds like an otherworldly version of Sam Smith, laced with emotion and frailty when he isn't screaming to the heaviest bits.
That they can pull of a show of such magnitude is impressive enough. That they can manage it with their mystique only growing in allure speaks to a band completely assured in what they do. As statements go, it's about the only thing Sleep Token have ever not been coy or ambiguous about.
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