In the cold, slow-moving early days of January 2023, something incredible happened. With no warning, Sleep Token unleashed a new song upon the world that was — at the time — their most jaw-dropping offering to date.
“Chokehold” begins ominously with a scratching, grinding buzz and Vessel sings declaratively: “When we were made/It was no accident/We were tangled up like branches in a flood.” The soft trill of a piano comes in, the suspense builds and then one of the most dramatic riffs the band have committed to record crashes down. It’s just the first twist in a dynamic single full of them.
“Chokehold” struck a chord with fans and landed Sleep Token cosigns from some unlikely voices. Lorna Shore frontman and deathcore YouTube star Will Ramos covered the song, and then dissected Vessel’s vocal technique with a panel of experts on The Charismatic Voice YouTube channel. Even wilder was when American Idol star Chris Daughtry surprised a crowd at London’s Royal Albert Hall with a dusky acoustic performance of the single.
Yet the most remarkable thing about “Chokehold” is that, for all the fervor it stirred, the song Sleep Token released just 24 hours later had an even more profound impact on their career.
On January 6th, the day after “Chokehold”’s release, the band dropped a second 2023 single, called “The Summoning.” If “Chokehold” started a fire, this new song poured kerosene on it. A near-seven-minute masterpiece, “The Summoning” took Sleep Token’s genre-blending approach to new extremes, spanning the divide between death-metal-esque savagery and sultry funk. Not only did it work sonically, but it somehow made beautiful sense conceptually.
The song quickly went viral on TikTok, partly because of the stunning contrast between the styles it plays with, and also due to its erotically charged lyrics. Sleep Token had hinted at lustful thoughts in the past, but “The Summoning” was easily their most overtly sexual song to date.
At this point, over half a decade into their career, Sleep Token were hardly unknowns, and the hype around them had been building in the underground alternative-metal scene. But the one-two punch of “Chokehold” and “The Summoning” sent them skyward.
Sleep Token dominated online conversation, trending on Twitter for days on end, and their streaming numbers shot through the roof. Multiple songs trended on Spotify simultaneously, but it was “The Summoning” that really took off, rocketing to 15 million plays on the platform in less than two months. (As of this writing, it tops 250 million Spotify streams.)
On January 17th, Sleep Token embarked on a sold-out U.K. headlining tour, playing some of their biggest venues to date, including the 5,000-capacity Hammersmith Apollo in west London. Befitting the band’s growing audience and the launch of their latest chapter, these Rituals were notably scaled up in terms of production: Sleep Token performed amid a stage setup festooned with plants, and Vessel started wearing an elaborate shoulder piece emblazoned with gold (to protect him from Sleep, some fans have theorized).
Additionally, Espera, the trio of female backing singers from 2022’s “Room Below” Ritual were along for the ride; the three women (affectionately nicknamed “The Vesselettes” in some fan circles) performed in cloaks, their faces covered while they stood eerily stock-still.
The tour was made even more special by Sleep Token debuting two brand-new songs during their set: the angsty pop-metal exercise “Granite” and the elegant, jazz-infused “Aqua Regia.” The studio versions were released in the middle of the tour, once again dropping within 24 hours of each other, on January 18th and 19th, respectively.
Even before Sleep Token’s third album was formally announced, fans understood that this sudden wave of new songs heralded an imminent follow-up to This Place Will Become Your Tomb. After the release of the apocalyptically heavy “Vore” in the middle of February, that speculation became fact: Take Me Back to Eden was announced for a mid-May release and was set to be the final installment of the band’s album trilogy. The group’s devotees had already been trying to figure out the record’s title from a secret code that had appeared on the band’s lead-up graphics.
On Take Me Back to Eden, the turbulent hot-and-cold dynamic between Vessel and Sleep reaches its breaking point. His devotion to and lust for Sleep persists, but Vessel recognizes that he is quite literally in a chokehold within their relationship. Even more so than on the band’s previous work, his emotions are conflicted throughout this record.
On “Granite,” Vessel rages against Sleep’s uncommunicative behavior, even labelling him “aggressive and controlling,” while on “Aqua Regia” — despite the song’s undercurrent of desire — he affirms that he is “done dancing to alarm bells.” By track nine, “DYWTYLM,” he reaches the firm conclusion that not only is Sleep incapable of returning the love he’s craved all along, but perhaps Vessel himself cannot muster the same devotion he seeks from the deity: “I cannot hope to give you what I cannot give myself.” By the album’s closing track, “Euclid,” the relationship has finally splintered, leaving Vessel feeling reflective but also anxious to move forward, knowing that “I just need to leave this part of me behind.”
Once again, every song on Take Me Back to Eden comes with its own visual identity, but this symbology is Sleep Token’s most complex and detailed to date. Each song is represented by its own fantastical character — best described as monsters or demons — that are illustrated by Alex Tillbrook in the art booklet that comes with physical copies of the record. Some of the creatures appear in music video form, as well.
Each character looks distinct from the others, but they do share some common features. Many have devil-like horns, and the majority have an unusual number of body parts. The character representing “Ascensionism” has four arms, the one for “Rain” has three heads and the creature for “Chokehold” has numerous arachnid-like legs. Meanwhile, the character representing “Vore” has arms with two Venus flytrap-like mouths in place of hands, echoing the song’s motifs of consumption and swallowing, and winking to its title’s reference to the fetish vorarephilia, the erotic desire to consume or be consumed by another person or creature.
In addition, most of the characters hold at least one weapon, and many wear some form of armor. These accoutrements are possibly reflective of the heightened sense of conflict between Vessel and Sleep throughout the album. The character representing “The Summoning” (who wears a shoulder piece akin to the one that Vessel wears onstage) clutches a huge gun almost as big as the creature itself, while others wield axes and other bladed weapons. In two of its four hands, the floating character in a knight’s helmet representing “Ascensionism” holds a handgun and a three-pronged dagger, like a mini version of Poseidon’s trident.
There are also a few references to weaponry in the lyrics: In “Chokehold,” Vessel proclaims, “I come as a blade/A sacred guardian,” while in “Aqua Regia” he speaks of “a perfect start to a perfect war/Putting down the roses, picking up the sword.”
One compelling fan theory about these characters is that they’re Sleep’s previous vessels. Others speculate that they could be physical manifestations of Vessel’s personal demons, or even past versions of Vessel himself.
Indeed, there are references to the concept of past lives on the album. In “Ascensionism,” the line “Tell me you met me in past lives” suggests Vessel and Sleep’s toxic bond predates this lifetime (or perhaps that’s just what Sleep tells Vessel to create the illusion that their connection is stronger than it really is). “The Apparition” reinforces this idea: “Well, I believe/Somewhere in the past/Something was between/You and I, my dear.”
If Sleep and Vessel have been entangled for decades or even centuries, across different incarnations, it raises the question of what the weapons are for. Are they for Vessel to use while defending and protecting Sleep, or tools for him to battle the deity as the toxicity between them worsens?
The two song-representing characters who’ve most intrigued fans correspond to the album’s final two tracks. Both are quite different compared to their armored, multi-limbed peers. The figure for the penultimate song, “Take Me Back to Eden” — interestingly, Sleep Token’s only title track to date — has no face but bears angel wings and a scythe. The juxtaposed elements of an angel and the Grim Reaper evoke themes of death, worship and immortality — all themes that crop up at the end of the album’s story. The fan consensus is that the title track concludes Take Me Back to Eden, while the album’s actual closer, “Euclid,” wraps up the trilogy overall, serving as a sort of epilogue.
The character representing that song is a masked figure dressed in a toga-like garment, holding Vessel’s severed head. What does that ominous image mean about the future of Sleep Token? Some feared it signals the end of the band, while others have wondered if it foreshadows the group re-emerging with a new story and a new look, perhaps similar to the way Slipknot change their masks with each album cycle, or how Ghost “kill off” versions of Papa Emeritus to make way for a successor. At the very least, the figure reflects the song’s focus on rebirth through the death of the old, as Vessel proclaims: “I must be someone new.”
Musically, Take Me Back to Eden is Sleep Token’s most ambitious body of work to date. Its sonic range is considerably greater than This Place Will Become Your Tomb, folding in sounds and genres the band hadn’t touched before. The extremes are also much more pronounced. “The Summoning” and “Vore” are the heaviest songs of their career so far, while the airy, almost tropical-sounding “DYWTYLM” is Sleep Token at their poppiest.
Meanwhile, the colossal “Are You Really Okay?” feels like Sleep Token’s take on an arena-sized ballad, though its lyrics are claustrophobic, dark and hint at self-harm. (Since its corresponding character is holding a baby and the song mentions Vessel being woken up by a loved one “dripping crimson on the carpet,” some fans have posited that “Are You Really Okay?” is not about self-harm at all, but rather miscarriage.)
The most impressive musical feats on the record, however, are some of the band’s longest songs. The super-sized pair, the seven-minute “Ascensionism” and eight-minute-plus “Take Me Back to Eden,” unify every aspect of Sleep Token’s sound, from delicate piano balladry to crushing heavy metal to bursts of trap-infused R&B (both notably use autotune to add a disembodied quality to Vessel’s voice). Together, the two pieces feel like a culmination of the band’s sonic explorations so far, elevating their music into the heady realm of progressive rock while flirting with the longform, movement-based structures of classical music.
Even as it marks an incredible step forward for the band, both creatively and commercially (it landed at No. 16 on the Billboard 200), Take Me Back to Eden occasionally looks back. It’s the most self-referential installment of Sleep Token’s trilogy, especially toward its conclusion where the nods to previous songs become most overt. In particular, lines in the opening verse of “Take Me Back to Eden” — “I dream of phosphorescence/Bleed through spaces” and “We dive through crystal waters, perfect oceans” — can be interpreted as callbacks to Sundowning and This Place Will Become Your Tomb, respectively.
Later, the title track evokes the LP’s beginning by echoing the opening lines of “Chokehold,” creating poetic bookends to the album’s narrative. Similarly, the entire trilogy concludes by looping around to its start, with a section of “The Night Does Not Belong to God” being revived in “Euclid,” bringing the story full circle.
As for Sleep Token’s own story, “Euclid”’s image of Vessel’s disembodied head notwithstanding, the band’s journey was far from over. Take Me Back to Eden skyrocketed them to previously unimaginable heights. This anonymous masked band with their eccentric, whip-lashing sound and dense, dizzying mythology had become bona fide arena headliners: They sold out a breakthrough-year-capping December gig at London’s 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena within just 10 minutes!
2024 would see Sleep Token’s victory lap continue, as the band played major U.S. festivals including Sonic Temple and Sick New World and, on their own stateside headlining tour, sold out renowned venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Radio City Music Hall.
Most remarkably of all, there were even bigger achievements yet to come.
You can read more about Sleep Token’s acclaimed rise to fame in Revolver’s special collector’s issue, which is available to order with two new alternate, collectible covers over here.