"sleep token isnt a metal band tho"
I've heard this refrain a lot, a lot over the last... what's it been, two weeks? Two weeks since Sleep Token's Even in Arcadia came out? I’m starting to think there’s something to this argument, though. Not that Sleep Token aren't a metal band ever, just not always - because they’re not always playing metal. I think how you classify the group tells a lot about your taste. Metal snobs reject Sleep Token's status as a metal band outright at least partially because they don’t like S.T., or at least don’t like the genre mashup they engage in. I feel like pop-disdaining critics will call them a metal group, and metal-haters a pop group. I mean, it's not conclusive or anything, but I think it's fair to ask why we decide to tag a genre mashup as first and foremost being one genre or the other, right? Why is Sleep Token, a group that blends pop and metal sounds together, called only one or the other (other than the fact that the term "pop metal" doesn't make anyone happy anymore because nobody is willing to admit in public that they like hair-metal, which is all the image calls to mind for some folks (yet those Ghost albums are super-popular, go figure)).
This is probably too heady a discussion point for this album, but maybe it's something to think about while I write about Even in Arcadia, an album I bullied myself into because I was made aware of someone making a Sleep Token lore-themed RPG on a journaling website, after those first two singles had come up as conversation points in a Discord server I'm in. A triumph of the new and old generations of pseudo-social-media!
So, when I started out on this project, I was actually kind of liking the first song, "Look to Windward," but it's also super distracting because it changes genre a lot. I'd have to listen to this many times to shake that feeling, but why would I want to when it doesn't do any of these things in a way that stands out very well? Low-BPM moody pop rock, djent-tinged metalcore, low-BPM moody pop rock with drum machine that eventually acquires an almost rap, less djent-tinged metalcore. I think in particular the main overarching sound that truly defines Sleep Token is that of nu-metal, but it's approached in a very weird way. In my previous writeup, I noted a strong influence of, and perhaps main target of, Deftones, but it feels like instead of blending sounds together in a proper way, what Sleep Token has done is chop everything up and let the pieces just kinda sit there awkwardly. There is value in this, and hopping between disparate sounds can be used to certain purposes - and this example isn't even particularly extreme, but it amplifies the farcical quality of the subject matter (possibly life itself). It also can serve to make the metal aspects more musically intense because they are not diluted by being part of a genre muddle elsewhere in the song and can be left to hit way harder - reminiscent of no small amount of quiet-verse-loud-chorus songs in various alt-rock genres... just with less (specifically) chorus involved. The consequence of this is that it can be quite jarring, and deeply off-putting to an audience who doesn't want something that concentrated (and an audience who does might reject it for its surroundings anyway, as metalheads often do out-of-hand with S.T.) In theory, the shift to metal can be jarring, if you've never heard music before and cannot preternaturally discern where the switch is going to happen because it is monstrously predictable in this song. I would term it a valiant effort, and not something without merit to at least try making, but it is a failed attempt at best.
Lyrically, one of the album's major themes is centered around S.T.'s rise to fame, and in particular, the anonymous nature of the group. No surprises here, but there are a lot of people out there who have been searching for Vessel's identity. (It is known, by the way!) I get it, though; people nowadays are a little too happy to consume celebrities. Yes, I worded it that way. There is an insatiable lust to consume people. Metaphorically, I guess, but over the last decade and change, people have gotten so goddamn parasocial in their behavior about people. What do you really hope to gain knowing who Vessel is? Maybe you'll like his previous projects. I don't know that you will. But also, even if he is playing a fictional character on stage, he's a real person. All I can think when I see this kind of behavior from people is that they don't want to ever see this project continue, because I have to imagine there is nothing that will make you want to keep working on a thing more than interacting with one's own most over-the-top fans... particularly if they're the sort of person who is writing songs about how stressed they are because of being famous. Even people who do try to become famous and want it realize they were wrong when they get there. Does the name "Kurt Cobain" mean anything to anyone, by chance? (Obviously this is far from the only thing that led to Kurt taking his own life. But it sure as hell could not have helped.)
As much as I get it, though, and I think it's fair... I admit that I don't think it's what I would have come to a Sleep Token album for, but I am not super-invested, so the high concept makes me think they'd have more Ghost vibes (lyrically!). Also, it does not really matter if your song sounds bad. This I think is one of the worst things about a lot of Even in Arcadia - even where the album's songwriting is good (and it's not without its moments - re-listening to "Emergence" has helped me realize there are good ideas here when it doesn't jump to them so awkwardly as to ruin its own vibes1 and I actually think the song is kind of okay, maybe even good, now!), there's always the problem that the production is extremely bad. Maybe the worst example is "Caramel," amplified by the worst use of auto-tune on the record that makes the words harder to identify (though less than I thought the first time). I don't know if I want to be too hard on this! This is an experimental band, and besides, I've heard worse production on albums I quite like! Admittedly, it's usually on stuff that's a little bit rawer than this: Zen Arcade, for example, is an album I quite love, but it does have a very chunky sound (which is admittedly fitting for punk, but it's still quite hard on first-time listeners). But it just is not very good; everything is so gloopy and overproduced that the Imagine Dragons comparisons are something that I regret that I have to agree with. I really didn't want to say that because that's a cheap shot. Wow, you said the name of the I-band. What else ya got in that bag o' tricks, Ms. Music Reviewer, some Nickelback jokes? You gonna shit on Chad Kroeger like you're too good for "She Keeps Me Up"? Unfortunately, no, quite a lot of this music does have moments, and perhaps they are not intentional, of sounding like Imagine Dragons! "Dangerous"'s more mid-weight offerings just sound like an Imagine Dragons outtake with an admittedly more appealing vocalist!
I shouldn't be surprised; mixing and mastering of music have just gotten worse over time, thanks to a variety of reasons... that mostly involve just making certain parts, if not everything, louder. A producer - I think his name was Rip Rowan? - once commented on the infamously badly-compressed Rush album Vapor Trails by remarking that nobody wants their disc to be the quietest one in the rotation, but that can often have dire consequences when taken to an extreme. He was right, and now that's basically all of modern music. So a bunch of tracks on this album are goddamn ruined by this atrocious mixing; "Damocles" is another track I can cite immediately off-hand where some vocals get absolutely buried by the instruments that are turned way too high up. A pity because I was actually vibing a bit with the track. The quieter tracks on Even in Arcadia seem to be the better ones, like the title track, and... okay, I want to like "Gethsemane." It's almost a good song, but once you get into the latter part (when the rapping starts), the percussion track is once again far too loud, threatening to (but not actually) bury several elements.
I suppose at bare minimum this album doesn't sound as clipped-all-to-hell as Vapor Trails was. I'm pretty sure it's pretty severely clipped, but it doesn't have the specific sound of being clipped to hell. Just obnoxiously loud and mixed poorly.
I also think we need to call a moratorium on music box sounds outside of music boxes. I don't think there's much new you can do with it anymore. Speaking of unoriginal: that djent sound. This feels like it's become the go-to sound for a lot of groups trying to show how down they are with the heavier side of metal, and as a resultl it's become played out and kind of tired. I remember hearing Tesseract's One right about when it came out back when I was still on the road to a computer science degree. It's been fifteen years since then and it was not new at the time, surely we can come up with something else to glom onto? This being the main metal sound means that the metal sections are a bit tedious and, worse, faceless. Between all of this, I actually really disliked hitting the Requisite Metal Parts of each song - when the back half of "Infinite Baths" turned entirely into metal, I was not impressed. Good job making this kind of music feel boring.
I know why people like this: inexperience. Okay, that's mean. I get that there's a place for this, because I should really vibe with this. I like the idea of binding metal with more popular genres, because you can do some very interesting things by putting together wildly disparate parts. But that's not what's going on here. Instead, Sleep Token feels like it's a type of music that - I know I've said this before and I know it's extremely rude to the audience, but - is made for people who call themselves "not like other girls." In the fanbases of all of the sound's constituent parts. (Part of this line is a rumination on how nu-metal still feels like it's considered super cringe.)
There are ideas here, but none of them are accomplished well. Still, if this is what it takes to get metal that's not from legacy acts back on the charts... well, maybe some of that will actually hold my interest some. Maybe if someone produces those records in such a way that they sound good...
1. ↑ Compare "Domino" by Genesis, which makes a big and not really expected leap, but still happens in a fairly smooth transition. Its big benefit, of course is that it does this when the song gets a lot quieter, much like the other previously-mentioned Genesis song "Supper's Ready". Meanwhile, "Emergence"'s big downside is that it uses a very awkwardly-inserted rap section that makes the song feel like it was written in the 90s. The raps are fine (though maybe there's too much British accent on some of them), but the way they are integrated into the songs makes them feel corporate-mandated despite not being so (as far as I know).