The metal scene is the only scene in which a band like Sleep Token could have come up. All of the mystique and lore about the band aside, its sound is rooted in blast beats, dance breaks and melancholy folk.
The heavy incorporation of pop music is the natural conclusion of a process that started in the early 2000s when Korn and Limp Bizkit held top spots on TRL. Just listen to the sad-boy lyrics of the alt-metal of the past couple of decades, and you’ll see that straight-up pop wasn’t the next step. Sleep Token just took it.
As for the lore, on paper, Sleep Token is an anonymous band whose members worship a god called Sleep and offer up songs to it as Tokens with a wealth of mythology you’re more than free to Google. But what often gets overlooked about Sleep Token is that it's a great band that does a fantastic job of entertaining its audience — whether through its mythology, the cryptograms in its album art or its concerts.
Debates about where any band is welcome fundamentally contradict the point of musical performance, which is to entertain and delight. In other words, bands are supposed to be fun. All that mythology is supposed to be fun. Concerts, especially, are supposed to be fun. And on Saturday night in Irving — in its own dark, special way — Sleep Token put on an incredibly fun show for longtime fans and newcomers alike.
The crowd was thick, looping around the bars and restaurants surrounding The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory, all hoping for a spot closest to the band or an opportunity to score tour merchandise that has long been sold out online. As long as the line was, it moved quickly.
As Empire State Bastard, the night’s opening act entered the stage at 8:01, the band apologized for its tardiness. A glance around the crowd revealed many fans happy to see the show starting, but they seemed largely unmoved by the opener’s experimental hardcore. It’s not that the band was bad. In another venue, at another time, the energy they brought would have surely shaken the foundation. But this crowd was clearly here for Sleep Token, and the task of opening up for such a band is surely not without its difficulty.
To say that Sleep Token’s fandom is devoted is an understatement. People drove for hours to see this show, camped out for hours to see this show and wore their best face paint and masks for this show. Everything in their way was just one step closer to seeing the band that had inspired so many deep thoughts, been responsible for so many great memories and given every fan so much to look forward to, even if that meant sitting through another Empire State Bastard song.
At 9 p.m sharp the lights went dark, and all the phones came out. The venue’s projectors would stay dark for the whole night, drawing the eyes to the stage.
First, the group's frontman Vessel appeared, next a trio of women backup singers, then drummer II. The noise was deafening in the silent breaks, and when bassist III and guitarist IV entered the stage, they were bathed in a sea of blue lights and lasers. The master of ceremonies began with the declaration, "The Night Does Not Belong to God."
A volley of claps led by III preceded the intro to "The Offering." The audience stood enthralled, hanging on to every syllable uttered by the Vessel, losing control in the breakdown as the singer lowly whispered, “Go, go.”
Dark Signs of the Time
The show was inarguably controlled by Vessel, whether he was bouncing around the stage in the night’s most energetic moments, or taking the podium front and center for more hip-hop and R&B-driven track “Dark Signs” or slower ones such as “Higher.” Indeed, the show was split in three parts, each representing a different album and a different iteration of the band’s surprisingly short history. Each section concluded with a brief intermission with the stage blacked out as one British voice or another came over the system to explain how the soul travels through various realms.
While there were early signs of how heavy the band could get early on, much of the heaviness came later. Instead much of the show’s middle section focused on how not-metal the band could be.
Vessel took the stage on keyboard for an acoustic intro to “Atlantic.” It was another moment when all the cameras, all the lights and all the voices in audience joined in chorus. Then the spooky trio joined. Then the lasers shined through. The rest of the band joined the stage. And what came next was ethereal. Sleep Token showed how metal could elevate vocal pop to the point of inexorable feeling.
Make no mistake, what Sleep Token does with music is incredible. It’s a circus act where the music is the acrobatic performance, leaping through genres and emotional depths. It was sexy too. You should have heard the women scream when Vessel beckoned the audience to bite, to “split my skin” during “Hypnosis.” The band would have to settle for the audience swaying their arms instead.
For "Missing Limbs," Vessel took to the stage himself with guitar and nothing else, again to a chorus of, well, everyone in attendance, even if all they could do was hum the tune.
Vessel did pushups in the guitar break of “The Summoning,” II proved why he might be the best metal drummer since Joey Jordison, then during that breakdown (yeah, the one that blew up on TikTok, “My love, did I mistake you for a sign from god?”) there was no mic, no system, and nothing could have out matched the audience’s voice.
What makes a band like Sleep Token so special isn't the lore and it isn't the gimmick. What makes it so special is its unique blend of music and ability to bring people together.
You see it in the way a straight-up pop song like "Granite" can get even the scariest-looking metal heads slow dancing. Or was the chanting of the lyrics back and forth between groups of friends who had never met before the day of the show. It was evident in the way everyone raised their hands and voices in unison in the name of, not metal, not pop, not hip-hop, nothing but good music delivered with real conviction.
And maybe that’s what this whole thing about this mystical god, Sleep, is at the end of the day. A means to showing real devotion to an art that really does have the power to draw everyone (like, everyone, everyone) together. No matter the weather.
Lightning literally struck as the band played “Rain.” The lights dripped and the fans clapped like thunder. The lightning became more intense as the show entered its final songs, as though the weather itself was responding to the intensity of the performance.
Thunder struck as the band finished its third set. Some people started leaving, others clapped for the weather. Lasers illuminated the raindrops over the lawn as the band finished its final songs, Vessel returning to his podium for "Take Me Back To Eden."
And just when you thought it was over, Vessel walked over to the keys for just one final song, "Euclid." It was mournful, it was beautiful, it was electric. It raised everyone’s voices no matter how they presented themselves. Everyone and everything in that moment was beautiful, aside from the audience being unable to keep up with the claps led by III.
Ending with "Euclid" gave the production a circular feel, closing with the revelation, "The night belongs to you."
