Sleep Token did more than just level up in 2023, they took over.
In the grey, sluggish drag of early January, while most bands were still posting tour recap dumps and “new year new me” captions, Sleep Token dropped ‘Chokehold’ out of nowhere, a slow burn opening that crawled under your skin, then a riff that landed like a concrete slab to the chest.
It was the kind of song that made even casual listeners stop scrolling.
The internet did what it always does when it smells blood in the water, covers started spreading fast, including one from Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos, plus a deep dive vocal breakdown on The Charismatic Voice. Even Chris Daughtry got in on it, pulling out an acoustic version at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which is a pretty wild place for a band this strange to start leaking into.
The real shift happened the very next day
Sleep Token followed up with ‘The Summoning’, a near seven minute genre bender that swung from heavy, teeth grinding brutality into something slicker, funkier, and honestly kind of filthy.
TikTok grabbed it by the throat, partly because of the whiplash structure, partly because the lyrics leaned harder into desire than the band ever had before.
That one, two punch shoved Sleep Token out of “rising” territory and into full blown takeover mode.
By mid January, they were headlining bigger UK rooms, selling out shows, and scaling up their Ritual production with a stage dressed in plants and an upgraded Vessel look. Their backing vocal trio Espera returned too, cloaked and motionless, like ghosts hired to harmonise you into the void.
New tracks ‘Granite’ and ‘Aqua Regia’ hit during that run, then ‘Vore’ arrived in February, setting the stage for ‘Take Me Back to Eden’. The album didn’t just cap a trilogy, it turned the band’s mythos into something arena sized, without sanding off the weird edges that got them here.
Article credit: Revolver
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