The Stuff of Lore: Sleep Token Hit Another Level With No. 1 Album, Massive Arena Tour, Masks

“Raise me up again/Take me past the edge/I want to see the other side,”
From “The Summoning,” Sleep Token

Heavy metal, thankfully, will never die. Even after the death-infused Spinal Tap II: The End Continues tried to nail a hammer into its coffin by crushing Elton John on-stage under a life-size Stonehenge; or the late-great Ozzy Osbourne sadly passing 17 days after his final show in his hometown of Birmingham; or Kiss’ beloved Spaceman Ace Frehley succumbing just last week from a fall in the studio at the age of 74, today’s headbangers ball today remains robust and filled with rising stars.

You could say U.K. metal acolytes Sleep Token have been hiding in plain sight since forming in 2016, but that would ignore the fact the band’s two principals – the mysterious lead vocalist/co-songwriter Vessel and the drummer known only as II – with blood colored flecks spackling their face coverings that evoke Scream’s Ghostface, Halloween’s Michael Myers, V for Vendetta (or Vessel?) and a hockey goalie mask and are completely anonymous. On top of that, in their nearly decade-long existence, the pair has done a grand total of two interviews, one by Vessel for Metal Hammer in 2017 and another by II with the YouTube site Drumeo about a year ago.

After three albums on UMG’s well-respected hard rock label Spinefarm Records – originally started in Finland by Riku Paakkonen (the roster includes Atreyu, Bullet for my Valentine, Death from Above 1979, Killing Joke and the Scorpions) – Sleep Token signed to RCA Records, where they have found their greatest success. Releasing Even in Arcadia in May, the full-length debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 127,000 in album equivalent sales. 

In the U.K., Sleep Token went from headlining the 900-capacity Islington Assembly Hall in 2020 to selling out London’s Wembley Arena (12,500) in less than ten minutes in 2023, before playing two nights at the 20,000-capacity 02 Arena last year.

After opening for bands like Bring Me the Horizon in the U.S., Sleep Token quickly rose from headlining L.A.’s 770-cap El Rey, a show at the 1,700-seat House of Blues in Anaheim and two performances at the 2,000-seat Fox Theater in Pomona, California, in 2023, to a just-completed largely sold-out AEG-promoted U.S. arena tour. The latter included dates at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena, Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, Cleveland’s Rocket Arena, Minneapolis’ Target Center, Denver’s Ball Arena, Portland’s Moda Center, Oakland’s Oakland Arena and Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena.

For 17 Sleep Token U.S. Arena shows, according to AEG Presents, the band sold an average of 12,117 tickets at an average price of less than $119 (a high of $250 in the pit to a same-day low of $50), grossing roughly $1.4M per show. Though some stops fared better. According to Pollstar Boxoffice Reports, the group’s show at Barclays Center on Sept. 22 grossed $1.79 million on 12,561 tickets. The U.S. shows were significantly more lucrative than the four Pollstar Boxoffice Reports for their European dates in late 2024, which had lower ticket prices and none crossed the seven-figure threshold.  

“Even from that last tour, we could see this band had a real super-fandom thing going on, with shows being sold out and impressive merch sales,” said AEG Presents VP Global Touring Brittanie Delava. “That gave us the confidence to book them into arenas this time around. In fact, we undersold this tour.  We could have done at least 40 dates with them. Their fan base is so passionate. Utterly devoted. It’s a community.”

The nearly 12,000 who filled Crypto.com offered an eclectic mix of young and old, some families with kids under 10, dressed in their finest black cloaks and goth eye makeup in obvious cosplay, a combination of Game of Thrones and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, at once medieval with a glimpse of a dystopian future. Backed by their own ever-changing symbol – a Prince-like glyph incorporating the “S” and “T” of the band’s name — the stage set is a cave dwelling with two windows looking out at a Pompeii-like city smoldering in the background, the flaming volcanoes represented by lightning-like lasers, the ash in the form of ubiquitous confetti dropped from the ceiling. In another surprise, there’s almost a 50-50 split between male and female, the crowd rapt and attentive, hanging on every Vessel utterance as if attending a black mass at a metal church, both state-of-the-art modern technology and pagan at the same time.

After a between-set soundtrack of an atmospheric whooshing wind tunnel, the music itself doesn’t fit neatly into any genre, with Vessel’s keening falsetto and classical piano forming a whisper-like human counterpoint to the slabs of bombastic Meshuggah-meets-Metallica screams, set off by a dose of mathematical Tool-ish prog and rhythmic hip-hop trap beats. Underlying the music is a complex back story that includes a cult-like devotion to a nameless deity who answers to Sleep, the songs’ “Tokens” that petition that lord with prayer and concerts dubbed “Rituals” for an involved fan base that goes by the names of Followers, Faithful, Worshipers, Tokers and/or Sleepies. The surprisingly wholesome, upbeat 90-minute show is equally divided into four separate sections, each one bracketed by an instrumental interlude, a spiritual service that promises catharsis and ends in transcendence.

“I don’t like pigeonholing them as a metal act,” said AEG’s Delava. “They come from that world, but there’s classical piano, even saxophone. The appeal of the masks is that everyone can just focus on the music and forget about the personalities. It’s one of the most spectacular, beautiful live shows I’ve seen. The audience is so transfixed.  The fans are there to watch, sing along and take in the spectacle. It’s a very pure exchange. Everything they do is with that intention.”

In a world of social media that has demystified celebrities, Sleep Token zealously maintains its mystery in lore and a rich origin story that is the subject of numerous Reddit threads. “[Sleep] is the oldest God, a primal majesty that has endured the ages unperturbed by the mortality of a flawed and chaotic human race,” Vessel told Metal Hammer in his one published interview. “He is everyone. He is you. There’s a power in music that binds us all; every note relates to another. He showed me a vision of a world filled with depth and texture.

“It’s our job to translate and convey those complexities as best we can. Each of these songs is an experience, but to find the real details you’ll have to explore them yourself… Stay with us and we’ll show you the whole world through his eyes. What a magnificent sight that is.”

“Oh, it for sure is deep cultish,” wrote one fan on Reddit about the many easter eggs that form the group’s backstory. “There’s a ton of lore, and the anonymity of the band plays into it.”

Sleep Token has achieved this success from the bottom up, rather than the top down, with very little mainstream or even tastemaker press outside of metal magazines and websites, maintaining their masked identities in a way that harks back to the theatricality of KISS and Alice Cooper, through the tribal costumes of Slipknot, Mudvayne, GWAR and Insane Clown Posse up to the present-day with agency stablemates Ghost (at Dennis Arfa’s IAG) and management stablemates PRESIDENT (at Ryan Richards’ Future History Management).

IAG EVP Global Head of Artist Development Nick Storch suggested Sleep Token’s universe-building offers a positive, almost upbeat counterpart to the insanity of today’s modern world. “The band touches on a great many different themes, lyrically and musically,” he said. “To take aggressive metal and prog playing and place them next to pop melodies is pretty unique.”

Instead of proving a detriment in marketing the band, its steadfast refusal to admit a real identity has turned into a boon. It’s just the latest sign that the old media model no longer exists, even if the venerable N.Y. Times singled out Sleep Token’s “Caramel” for praise.  The deceptively sweet, poppy song on the new album about the double-edged sword of being worshiped could be about a God, a romantic partner, or, as seems pretty obvious, the audience itself, with the Times calling it a “fourth-wall-breaking genre-smasher that explores the band’s experience with growing popularity and the beautiful nightmare of fame.”

RCA Records VP Marketing Aaron Stern explained that what seemed an impediment to breaking the band was actually its strength. “In some bizarre, counterintuitive way, the power of no has continually worked for them. It’s why the audience watches everything they do in such great detail. Give all credit to the band for having this vision and sticking to it. They found ways to create this world and have fans eager to experience it. They have amassed this incredibly committed fan base with which they’ve found ways to communicate without communicating through the press.”

It was the release of the six-minute-plus long epic, “The Summoning,” Sleep Token’s “Stairway to Heaven,” on their final Spinefarm release, Take Me Back to Eden, which proved the breakthrough song that led to the band signing with a major label. Now at more than 262 million Spotify streams (and 37 million YouTube views, see below).

“The band just exploded after that, with demand far outpacing the supply of available tickets,” added IAG’s Storch. “There’s no telling how big Sleep Token can be. The masks let the music do the talking, so the fans get to immerse themselves completely and thoroughly. They don’t play by the traditional rules, and that’s by choice. They’re turning the paradigm on its head.

“We’re all looking for escape and connection from what’s going on out there in the real world. Sleep Token is providing a community, a refuge for outsiders who don’t fit in anywhere else, but it’s the music that is at the heart of it. What a novel concept… It’s just a great thing to have been a part of.”

“It’s an observant crowd hanging on to every word of every song, because they don’t get to hear from them in any other way,” said RCA’s Stern. “Then you begin to explore the world they’ve created, the lore that exists, the various fan communities. It’s like the Matrix.  This underground movement of like-minded souls who discover each other through the music.

“There’s no ceiling to this group. We were able to work in tandem with this band to understand the vision and goals and work collectively to achieve them on a much higher level. We wanted to time it so that when the first music was released, excitement was at a fever pitch among the rabid fans who have dedicated themselves to this group.”

Can comic books, video games, movies, action figures, virtual reality, AI and theme parks be far behind? Sleep Token might just be the Vessel to make all our rock dreams come true.

“We’re just along for the ride,” acknowledged RCA’s Stern. “We’re just as excited to see where it’s headed as the fans are.”

“Heavy metal will never go away,” concluded IAG’s Storch.  “As long as kids listen to music to shock their parents and their friends.”