After building a dedicated fanbase within the metal community with their first three albums, the enigmatic Sleep Token seems poised for a mainstream breakthrough with their major label debut, Even in Arcadia, out now on RCA Records.
Nominally a metal band, Sleep Token is led by an anonymous singer only known as Vessel, and all of the members wear identity-shielding masks — familiar tropes from a genre that’s spawned Slipknot and Ghost. But underneath the surface, you’ll find songs that twist through multiple sounds and styles while unraveling a story related to an elaborate mythology.
“When you really pay attention to the songs that they’re creating, there’s so much more going on there,” RCA COO John Fleckenstein tells ABC Audio. “They’re blending metal, they’re blending R&B, there’s electronic in there. And there’s real melody in these songs, and there’s real structure to it, and there’s real meaning and depth to it.”
With Even in Arcadia, the gospel of Sleep Token has begun to move beyond just the metal world. Lead single “Emergence” was the first Sleep Token song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 and has earned streaming numbers that Fleckenstein says “put them on a caliber of what honestly the biggest pop stars on the planet are doing.”
“It’s more about finding more Sleep Token fans and trying to find more people to fall down the rabbit hole that they are creating,” Fleckenstein says. “We’re not going after the metal fanbase, we’re going after music fans, period.”
What brings all those fans together, Fleckenstein feels, is the story Sleep Token’s songs are telling.
“To me, that’s the binder of all of this,” Fleckenstein says. “No matter which direction they go, there’s a story being told that is emotional and connecting on a human level.”
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